Husband goes diving every week to find body of wife who went missing during 2011 Japan tsunami

Thirteen years after the devastating Japan tsunami, a man is still searching for his wife, who lost her life during the disaster.

He remains determined despite the passage of time, continuing his quest to find her.

Yasuo Takamatsu, 67, is on a mission to honor his wife’s final wish, expressed in her last text message: “I want to go home.”

Since her disappearance, he has been diving at the spot where she went missing, holding on to the hope of finding her.

Yasuo and Yuko married in 1988 and settled in Onagawa, a coastal town in Miyagi prefecture. They had a son and a daughter.

On March 11, 2011, when a 9.0-magnitude earthquake and tsunami hit northeastern Japan, Takamatsu was driving back from a nearby city, safely out of harm’s way.

His children survived at school, but Yuko, who was working at the 77 Bank’s Onagawa branch, did not.

After a warning about a six-meter-high tsunami, the branch manager evacuated 13 employees to a rooftop nearly 10 meters above ground.

Despite this, a wave over 15 meters high swept away 12 people. Reports say that eight people, including Yuko, were never found.

In her final message, Yuko asked Yasuo, “Are you all right? I want to go home.”

Witnesses shared on social media that they saw bankers trying to escape. One post described the scene, highlighting the fear and desperation of female bankers climbing ladders in skirts and male bankers discarding their coats despite the cold.

Two years after the disaster, the rescue team returned Yuko’s working phone to Yasuo, who discovered an unsent message: “The tsunami is disastrous.”

Yasuo said it would be “depressing” to survive the tragedy without trying to find his wife.

This revelation deepened his resolve to fulfill her last wish and bring her home.

After retiring as a bus driver, Yasuo took up scuba diving, earning his license in 2014, and has been searching for Yuko ever since.

“I do want to find her, but I also feel that she may never be discovered as the ocean is way too vast – but I have to keep looking,” Yasuo said.

Every time he dives, he puts on a scuba tank and a dry suit, then enters the freezing ocean with help from his instructor, Masayoshi Takahashi, per the Daily Mail.

Masayoshi, who leads volunteer dives for missing Japan tsunami victims, believes it’s important to help Yasuo in his search for his wife.

At the time of the disaster, Yasuo was at a hospital in a nearby town with his mother-in-law and could not return to the devastated town.

The next day, after barriers were lifted, he went to Onagawa’s hospital, which had been used as an evacuation site.

He discovered the bank employees, including his Yuko, had been swept away. there

“I felt my knees buckling. I felt nothing in my body,” he said.

The 2011 Great Tohoku Earthquake was the most powerful ever recorded in Japan.

It was the worst disaster Japan has ever faced and ranks as the fourth most devastating in human history.

Waves reaching up to 40.5 meters crashed through the port of Onagawa in Miyagi, resulting in the deaths of 827 people—nearly 10 percent of the town’s population, JOE noted.

In addition to the fatalities, hundreds more were injured, and 70 percent of the town’s buildings were destroyed.

The Japan tsunami left over 450,000 people homeless and caused more than 15,500 deaths.

It destroyed thousands of homes, businesses, roads, and railways. Also, it led to the meltdown of three reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant.

Watch Yasuo Takamatsu talk about his search for his wife after the devastating Japan tsunami: