Japanese Man Goes Diving Every Week To Find Body Of Wife Who Went Missing During 2011 Tsunami

March 2011 was the last time Yasuo Takamatsu heard from his wife, Yuko.

That month marked the Great East Japan Earthquake, the fourth most powerful earthquake ever recorded and the strongest to ever hit Japan.

The quake triggered a devastating tsunami that changed countless lives forever.

The destruction was massive, leaving around 450,000 people without homes, claiming over 18,000 lives, and causing more than 2,500 people to be listed as missing—people whose bodies were never found.

Yasuo Takamatsu has been diving for more than a decade to search for his missing wife. TORU YAMANAKA/AFP via Getty Images

The tsunami also led to the infamous Fukushima nuclear disaster, adding another layer of tragedy to an already catastrophic event.

In the chaos that followed, Yuko was one of the many who were swept away by the tsunami.

The wave struck while she was at work at a bank. 

In what would become her final message, she sent her husband an email that read, "Are you OK? I want to go home."

Those words were the last he ever heard from her.

On that fateful day, Takamatsu was in the next town with his mother-in-law at a hospital.

Due to the widespread destruction, he was unable to return immediately to search for his wife.

When he finally could, he began the heartbreaking task of searching for her remains on land.

Months after the tsunami, Yuko’s phone was found in the bank’s car park.

The phone held an unsent text that said "the tsunami is disastrous," written at 3:25 pm local time.

The message was never delivered, but it showed that Yuko was alive at that moment. After that, there was no sign of her.

Takamatsu spent two-and-a-half years searching on land before deciding to shift his focus to the sea.

In September 2013, he started taking diving lessons to learn how to explore underwater.

Since then, he has gone diving every single week, tirelessly searching for any clues that might lead him to his wife’s body.

He's gone diving over 600 times to look for his wife in the past decade. TORU YAMANAKA/AFP via Getty Images

In the short film The Diver, Takamatsu shared, "I do want to find her, but I also feel that she may never be discovered as the ocean is way too vast—but I have to keep looking."

He doesn’t dive alone. His regular companion in these underwater searches is diving instructor Masayoshi Takahashi, who organizes volunteer dives to help search for missing tsunami victims.

Search efforts for the over 2,500 people who went missing during the 2011 disaster are still ongoing, though on a much smaller scale than before.

Takamatsu met his wife back in 1988 when he was serving in the Japanese military.

But by the time of the disaster, he was working as a bus driver.

In the decade since the tragedy, he has made more than 600 dives, each one driven by the hope of finding the woman he loved.