Yasuo Takamatsu Has Dived More Than 760 Times for Wife Yuko as Japan Still Counts 2,519 Tsunami Missing

Twelve of the 13 people who sheltered on the roof of Yuko Takamatsu's bank branch in Onagawa did not survive the rising water (Credit: US Air Force, 14 March 2011 courtesy; public domain)

Yasuo Takamatsu has dived more than 760 times into the sea off Onagawa, Japan, looking for his wife, Yuko. The 2011 tsunami swept her away, and nobody has ever found her body. He was still diving this year, when the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) World Service recorded one of his dives for the 10 July programme.

The latest National Police Agency figures put the number of people still missing from the disaster at 2,519. Families like Takamatsu's have waited more than 15 years with no body to bury. Yuko's last email to her husband, as he recalled it to the Associated Press in 2014, read: 'Are you OK? I want to go home.'