A Japanese man continues to search for the remains of his wife, who is believed to have died since an earthquake and tsunami struck Japan in 2011.
Yasuo Takamatsu, 67, hopes to fulfill a wish she expressed in her last text message to him: “I want to go home.”
The devoted husband dived into the sea more than 650 times at the spot where his wife Yuko disappeared, in the desperate hope of finding traces of her.
Takamatsu married Yuko in 1988. They lived in Onagawa, Miyagi Prefecture, a coastal town 70 km from the capital Sendai. The couple had a son and a daughter.
When the magnitude 9.0 earthquake and subsequent tsunami struck northeastern Japan on March 11, 2011, Takamatsu was driving home after dropping off his mother-in-law at a hospital in a nearby city. He was in no danger.
His children, who were at school, both survived the disaster, but Yuko did not.
She worked at the Onagawa branch of 77 Bank, which was located in a two-story building.
The store manager received a warning of a six-meter-high tsunami and evacuated 13 employees to the roof, which was almost ten meters above the ground.
Tragically, a wave over 15 meters high occurred, sweeping away 12 people.
It was reported that eight people, including Yuko, were never found.
Takamatsu said Yuko sent him one final text message when the disaster struck, saying, “Are you OK? I want to go home.”
Two years later, the rescue team gave Takamatsu his wife’s phone, which they had recovered from the rubble. It still worked, and Takamatsu found another unsent message addressed to him: “The tsunami is huge.”
He said he could not imagine how scared his wife must have been and he was determined to fulfill her final wish and bring her home.
Takamatsu, who worked as a bus driver before retiring, used his free time to take diving lessons and received his diving license in 2014. He has been looking for Yuko ever since.
Takamatsu said he knew Yuko would not be found alive, but he still wanted to bring her home – even if it was just part of her body.
“Let’s go home together,” Takamatsu said in an interview, as if Yuko could hear him.
He said he would continue the search as long as he was able.
The Great Tōhoku earthquake of 2011 was the strongest known earthquake in Japan.
The disaster killed 19,759 people in the country, and according to the official website of Miyagi Prefecture, 2,553 bodies are still missing.
