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"I told him he was acquitted, and he was silent," Hideko Hakamata, his 91-year-old sister, tells the BBC at her home in Hamamatsu, Japan.

After the rusty yellowish sphere, about the size of a wrecking ball, drifted ashore in Hamamatsu, Japan, officials in helmets and hazmat suits cordoned off the area, even planting a traffic cone on the sand to ward people off.

A mysterious metal ball spotted on a beach in Hamamatsu City this week prompted local police to scramble the bomb squad.

But the authorities in Hamamatsu, a city west of Tokyo, could not determine where the specimen had come from or who owned it, because its exterior was too rusty and had no visible markings, said Mr. Yagi of the coastal management bureau.

Dr. Send said the response to the Hamamatsu buoy struck him as a little odd, given the common use of such devices in ocean research and maritime shipping.