Harley Davidson Restore Project Stirs Respect, Admiration in Japanese Internet Community

The heartwarming, true story about a disaster-stricken man being reunited with his long lost Harley Davidson has made the rounds on the Internet and tugged at the heartstrings of Japanese Internet users in particular.

“They’ve started writing the movie already,” posted one enthusiastic reader on the Topsy.com comments section.

Man loses three family members and nearly all of his possessions in a horrific earthquake and tsunami and spends over a year in temporary housing before hearing one day that someone found his treasured motorcycle 4,000 miles across the ocean, reasonably intact considering the beating it took at the hands of the Pacific Ocean?  We may have something here, Mr. DeMille.

Of course, it gets better. Harley Davidson has agreed to ship the bike back to Japan and cover the bill for restoring the two-wheeler to its past glory.

“Well played, Harley,” user zigneko commented on Topsy. “What a cool thing to do! That’s what you have to do to promote your brand. To everyone else: don’t go throwing your stuff in the ocean hoping to recreate this story!”

There has been an outpouring of respect and admiration for Harley Davidson’s promise, with some readers pointing to it as an example of “the American way.”

One went so far as to say that this kind of generosity is not possible in Japan. Reader short_context wrote: “This is why Harley is so great. Japanese “monozukuri” companies that assemble by the numbers couldn’t do this.”

Any way you slice it, it’s a great story and certainly not the last of its type as objects large and small make their way around the post-March 11 world . . .

o