Annastasha Larsen, creator of a wishing tree, poses outside her home at Yokota Air Base, Japan, on Dec. 20. (Kelly Agee/Stars and Stripes)

YOKOTA AIR BASE, Japan — An Air Force spouse who started an annual wishing tree in her front yard at this airlift hub in western Tokyo nearly gave up the practice this year.

Then the base experienced a tragic loss Nov. 29. Eight airmen perished when their Yokota-based CV-22 Osprey crashed off the coast of Yakushima, an island in southern Japan.

What started in Florida nearly 10 years ago as an expression of personal loss became for Annastasha Larsen and her neighbors an expression of community loss and hope.

Anyone is welcome to write their wish on a slip of paper Larsen provides and attach it to the 30-foot pine tree in the Larsen yard on Pease Drive in Yokota’s eastside housing area. Larsen shares the home with her husband, three children and a dog.

“It has been a way to express my grief, hope for the future and memorialize others,” Larsen told Stars and Stripes via Facebook Messenger on Dec. 12. “My wish is that others can feel loved here, feel love for others and love for our community. I hope it can help us all heal a little from that tragic accident.”

Some notes left on the Larsen family wishing tree at Yokota Air Base, shown here on Dec. 20, reflect the loss of the crew aboard an Air Force CV-22 Osprey in November. (Kelly Agee/Stars and Stripes)

More than 150 anonymous messages were hanging Wednesday on the tree, including: “I wish strength for the families of our lost brothers,” and “I wish peace and happiness for my husband who has suffered a tremendous loss.”

The messages can also be lighthearted or personal. “I want to be the best ballerina in the world,” reads one.

People can leave their messages by stopping by any time of the day and writing on a tag left outside the tree in a waterproof box alongside a pen. Larsen puts the tags into waterproof sleeves to protect them from the weather, and she checks the notes every day.

An annual event for the Larsens since 2020, the wishing tree began in July 2014 after Annastasha’s second pregnancy loss, she said. The idea came to her as a way of processing her grief. The first wishing tree was a crepe myrtle in their front yard in Mary Esther, Fla.

“I wanted a way to mark the due date and memorialize our baby,” Larsen said. “I wanted to look to the future with hope and this seemed to be a way to do that. Surprisingly, our little neighborhood and beyond really took it to heart and participated, even though they didn’t know my story.”

More than 150 notes were hung on the Larsen family wishing tree at Yokota Air Base. (Kelly Agee/Stars and Stripes)

Larsen said she didn’t plan on another wishing tree, but her sister died in November 2020, coincidentally while the world was in the middle of the COVID-19 pandemic.

“I know it was a difficult year for everyone,” Larsen said. “Everyone lost something or someone.”

She revived the wishing tree tradition, this time at Yokota, in her sister’s memory, she said.

“I hoped it would help others come together, feel empathy and feel community when we had been separated, sad, frustrated and were tired of being alone and feeling alone,” Larsen said.

She carried on the tradition in subsequent years as a means of communicating holiday cheer and to help others think of new beginnings for the new year.

She hesitated this year about putting out tags for the wishing tree. Children had come by previously and made a mess of it or wrote rude or mean things, she said.

 But then the Osprey crash happened.

“The wishing tree seemed to naturally fit in this time of year and in such a close-knit community like Yokota,” Larsen said. “It has been a bright spot in our lives, each year.”