13 Years After Japan Tsunami, Husband’s Search For His Missing Wife Continues

A Japanese man continues to search for his wife more than a decade after she perished in the devastating 2011 tsunami. Yasuo Takamatsu has been on a relentless quest to find the remains of his wife, Yuko, to give her a proper farewell.

The search began following the catastrophic tsunami that hit the Fukushima region on March 11, 2011. Takamatsu has been diving weekly for over ten years in an effort to locate his wife’s remains. The tsunami, which had a magnitude of 9.1, resulted in nearly 20,000 deaths and left over 2,500 people missing, making it the fourth most catastrophic tsunami in history and the deadliest ever to strike Japan.

Yuko, who worked at a local bank, had taken refuge on the roof with her colleagues when the tsunami waves reached a height of 60 feet. Yasuo started scuba diving in the murky waters near the site of her disappearance, making hundreds of dives off Japan’s coast in his search.

He was guided by Masayoshi Takahashi, a volunteer who cleans tsunami debris underwater and had experience finding bodies in such conditions. Together, they have scoured the cold seas for almost a decade.

Months after the disaster, Yasuo found Yuko’s phone in the bank parking lot where she worked, but he has yet to find any other trace of her. Her last unsent message to him read, “Are you okay? I want to go home,” while another message warned of the tsunami’s severity: “The tsunami is disastrous.”

In an interview with the New York Times, Yasuo shared, “I expected it to be difficult, and I’ve found it quite difficult, but it is the only thing I can do.” He added, “I have no choice but to keep looking for her. I feel closest to her in the ocean.”