On August 24, SCMP reported on the story of a Japanese man who is continuing to search for the body of his wife who went missing in the terrible double disaster in 2011.
Mr. Yasuo Takamatsu (67 years old) has dived into the sea more than 650 times at the site where his wife disappeared for 13 years. Takamatsu shared that he wanted to fulfill the wish that his wife - Yuko - sent in the last text message before the disaster: "I want to go home".
The couple married in 1988 and lived in Onagawa in Miyagi Prefecture, a coastal town 70km from the capital Sendai (Japan), and had a son and a daughter.
On March 11, 2011, when the earthquake and tsunami hit northeastern Japan, Takamatsu was driving home from a nearby city, so he was not in danger. His children are in school and all survived the disaster.
Unfortunately, at Takamatsu's wife's workplace, a wave more than 15 meters high struck and swept away 12 people. Among them, 8 people including Ms. Yuko were missing.
Takamatsu said his wife sent one last text message before the disaster, writing: "Are you okay? I want to go home." Two years later, the rescue team found Ms. Yuko's phone and saw another text message she was writing but had not yet sent to her husband: "The tsunami was very big." Takamatsu shared that he could not imagine how scared his wife was.
Before retiring, Takamatsu worked as a bus driver. He spent his free time learning to dive and obtained his license in 2014. Since then, he has been searching for his wife.
Even though he knew his wife was no longer alive, he still wanted to fulfill his promise to bring her home, even if it was just a part of her body. “Let's go home together," Takamatsu said in an interview, as if his wife could hear. He said he would continue searching as long as he could.
The 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami was the most devastating natural disaster to ever occur in Japan. This disaster caused 19,759 deaths. Of these, a total of 2,553 bodies are still missing, according to the official website of Miyagi Prefecture (Japan).
