2023-05-14 13:02:27
On March 11, 2011, the world shuddered, in the distance, when learning regarding the powerful earthquake of 9.1 degrees, and a subsequent tsunami in Japan, which devastated entire cities and towns. The force of the land and the sea destroyed almost everything on the northeastern coast of the Asian country.
More than 20,000 people died and 2,500 are listed as missing following that day, when life changed due to the impact of soil and water. The waves reached almost 10 meters in height.
Many are the stories that emerge, to date, from the depths of the hearts that lost more than the material: entire families or some of their members who never appeared once more, leaving behind eternal duels, impossible to conclude, in the absence of a sepulcher that helps to move on.
But there is a story in particular that the American director, Anderson Wright, found in the voice of a man whose wife disappeared, like thousands of Japanese that fateful day.
His story is distinguished, between the immensity of love and that of the sea, which took it from him more than a decade ago. That force now has him immersed in that same ocean, in which he learned to dive, hoping to find it. “as long as my body allows me”according to his words.
The tsunami in Japan that separated a great love
Yasuo Takamatsu got up early to drop off his wife, Yuko, at the bank where she worked near the Onagawa coast in Miyagi Prefecture, Japan.
That morning, he said goodbye to her and drove for several minutes towards her house, without imagining that the land and the sea were regarding to end everything, following what is known as one of the most powerful earthquakes in the history of mankind ( 9.1 degrees).
When the earth shook, the state alert was heard by all possible means: “Everyone who lives near the coasts must evacuate,” the messages said.
“At that moment I was calm, I was not worried. Maybe it was my wish, my hope that she was alive somewhere.”relates Yasuo, in the first person, in the production directed by Anderson Wright, The Diver (The diver).
However, the hours passed and the man who settled momentarily in calm, learned of the devastation that the land and the sea caused in the area where his wife was, with whom he had not been able to communicate even once since the earthquake.
From hope to desolation: “Everyone was swept away by the sea”
Yasuo and Yuko’s city was in chaos. The survivors took to the streets, or what was left of them, looking for their loved ones.
“It was overflowing with people, and we got lost. I didn’t panic. I knew I would eventually find her.”thought the man, whose hope began to fade when he found out that the place where his wife worked was completely covered by water.
“Everyone was evacuated to the top of the roof, even the top of the building was under water and everyone was swept away. She was afraid of the smallest things, like a door that suddenly slams shut in the wind.”.
The bad news began to spread, but so did the stories of survival, like the person who worked at Yuko’s bank, who managed to swim ashore a few miles away in Tsukahama.
The area was still flooded and rescue teams were working in that and other buildings to rescue people who might be trapped under the flooded rubble. However, Yuko was still missing.
“So, I started looking for her”
Weeks passed and Yasuo Takamatsu didn’t know anything regarding his wife. All he had was the conviction to search for her by her own means.
In a matter of 3 months, she returned to the shelters once more and once more, searching among hundreds of people for Yuko’s face, but none showed the eyes and smile of the woman, immortalized in the American documentary, for which her husband gave parts of a video taken in 1998.
The water began to recede and Yasuo scoured the destroyed sites that were exposed. The sea retreated showing the disaster.
“I searched through the rubble for his belongings. I thought maybe she would be there.”he recounts, reliving the worst moment of his life “I even searched in the mountains as far as I might. She had to be somewhere.”he thought, without exhausting his strength searching for her day and night.
However, the hope of finding her alive was fading for this man. The thought of his wife’s death began to mock his hope.
“So I started visiting the morgues. ‘She must be somewhere, so she: where might she be?’”he asked himself a thousand times.
It was when he understood that he would not find the answer on land, but in the place that represented the immensity of his love and, at the same time, his agony: the sea.
A love as immense as the sea: Yasuo’s 602 dives looking for his wife
In Psychology, mourning, when a vital event such as the death of a loved one occurs, is a process that is overcome according to the different ways that the human psyche allows. Some do not cry, at least initially. Others do it until they run out of tears.
Yasuo, on the other hand, has not been able to complete the process. 11 years following the tsunami in Japan, he continues to search for his wife, but this time IN THE OCEAN.
When he learned that the earth would not give him his wife’s body, to close the painful cycle, he learned to dive and since then he has thrown himself into the Japanese sea in the hope of finding her remains.
“So far I have done 602 dives. As long as my body allows me, I’ll keep looking.”, he assures, while they show the expertise with which he dives in the depths of the sea. The images show vestiges of what life was like in a country impacted by such a natural event.
“I want to go home”: Yuko’s last message, following the tsunami in Japan
Weeks following Yuko’s disappearance, Yasuo recovered his wife’s cell phone, something that removed both his pain and his hope of finding her.
“I wasn’t sure if it was a coincidence, or because the phone was waterproof. When I looked, there was another message that he tried to send me: ‘Are you okay? I want to go home””.
The scene shows him, following reading the devastating sentence, pausing. The pain on his face is more eloquent than any of his sentences, as he holds his wife’s pink mobile.
It occurs in one of his final appearances. However, it is, without a doubt, what kept him and keeps him in the depths, looking for her great love.
The lesson of this story, according to this Japanese, is that love is not summed up in a simple sentence, but in what a person is willing to do for you, in the name of that love.
“Let’s see… What is love? In other countries people can say ‘I love you’, but the Japanese know it without saying it. I think it’s more implicit and without having to say the words. That’s how I felt between us” (Your marriage).
Yasuo came to that conclusion by often facing the ocean that took his wife, without tiring or fearing the depths. The pain seems to have strengthened him to the point of challenging the sea.
It is how he lives his endless mourning, but also his immense love for Yuko.
Watch the full video of The Diver:
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