After losing his wife, Yuko, in the 2011 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami, Yasuo Takamatsu has spent more than a decade searching for her remains—driven by a promise, and a message that still haunts him: “I want to go home.”
Yuko had been at work in the coastal town of Onagawa when the tsunami struck. In the years since, Takamatsu—now in his late 60s—has learned to dive and conducted more than 600 solo dives in the waters off Onagawa, holding on to the hope that he might recover some trace of her.
His quiet perseverance and devotion have drawn international attention, offering a deeply human portrait of grief, resilience, and enduring love in the aftermath of one of Japan’s worst natural disasters.