Fifteen years after a devastating tsunami swept away his wife, Japanese man Yasuo Takamatsu continues to dive into the waters off Onagawa, Miyagi Prefecture, in search of her. By March 2026,
Takamatsu had completed his 763rd dive, returning to the Pacific about twice every month despite having found no trace of Yuko since she disappeared in the March 11, 2011 disaster.
Takamatsu’s wife was working at a local bank when the Great East Japan Earthquake and tsunami struck.
His last communication from her was a text message that read, “Are you okay? I want to go home.” He later discovered another message saved on her phone: “Tsunami huge.”
After the disaster, Takamatsu searched hospitals and evacuation centres for his wife, but she was never among those whose bodies were recovered.
With the search on land eventually yielding no result, he decided to learn diving and look for her himself.
He began making regular trips into the sea, believing that Yuko could have been carried away by the tsunami and buried beneath sediment or debris.
Reflecting on his repeated dives, he said, “After diving again and again, I started to feel that she might be nearby.”
What began as a search has gradually become a personal ritual for Takamatsu.
He has compared his dives to lighting incense at a family altar, describing them as a way of remembering Yuko and maintaining a sense of closeness to her.
Underwater, he swims along the seabed, navigating what he describes as a landscape of hills and valleys.
The sea that took his wife has also become the place where he feels most connected to her memory.
Takamatsu’s story was featured in the BBC World Service documentary ‘Diving for Yuko’.
A 2023 film about his search also documented his efforts, including the hundreds of dives he had undertaken by then.
The scale of the 2011 disaster remains evident in the number of people who have never been accounted for.
Japan’s Reconstruction Agency records 19,729 deaths and 2,559 people still officially missing from the Great East Japan Earthquake disaster.
The National Police Agency recorded 2,519 people still unaccounted for as of March 2026.
Despite the passage of time, Takamatsu has continued returning to the water.
The underwater environment has changed, with wreckage becoming habitats for marine life, but his reason for diving remains tied to the woman he lost.
For Takamatsu, each descent is therefore more than another attempt to find Yuko.
It is also a way of remembering his wife and keeping alive the bond they shared, even 15 years after the tsunami.
