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Everything just began to shake. Just kept asking, where is she? Have you seen her?
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I wouldn't know what I'd do without her. It looked like the world was ending. Growing up in Indiana, tsunamis and earthquakes are the things that you only see in Hollywood films.
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He was sure his world had ended. The love of his life was missing. That feeling that she's not all right began growing as each minute went by.
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Strangers in a strange land. They'd fallen in love. Then the quake hit, and all he knew was that her town was gone.
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Literally come hell or high water, I was getting into that damn town. And that's where he headed, right into that hell,
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willing to risk his life to try to save hers. There's fires on the hill, fire on the water.
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But could he get there in time? I never loved someone the way I loved Georgia. I'm Lester Holt, and this is Dateline.
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Here's Keith Morrison with Swept Away. Who can say what lurks out there, past the horizon,
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waiting impersonally, utterly at random, as thousands of lives tick to their unknowing ends?
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And simple coincidence, a young man from Middle America made a single decision. Could you imagine back there in Indiana
00:01:31
that you were about to make your life flip on its head this morning? No. No, never.
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How could he know that on the other side of the world a young woman made exactly the same decision?
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Or that they'd meet practically on the eve of one of the biggest natural disasters in recent memory?
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Or how could he know that in the middle of disaster, he'd lose her? I wouldn't know what I'd do without her.
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So, coincidence, love, disaster. There is no fairness about these things. They just are.
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Zach Branham turned 23 in 2010. had just picked up a degree in history from a college in Indiana.
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No idea what to do next. And then he saw an offer for a job in Japan. A two-year stint teaching English to elementary school kids.
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No Japanese language skills required. Why Japan, of all places? I don't think there's any rhyme or reason to it.
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I think it was just offered to me, and I jumped on it. The town they sent them to in Japan, called Kuji,
00:02:47
was a long, long way from his hometown of Nashville, Nashville, Indiana. On Sundays, he Skyped with his parents, John and Terry Whitcomb.
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How did he seem to be doing? It was rough at first. The language thing was the big thing.
00:03:03
You were a stranger in a strange land. Yes, yeah. Was it a lonely feeling? Yeah, it was.
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But it was made better by the fact that there were other foreign teachers in town. Along with the teachers, there was one other person, a volunteer, who helped the foreign
00:03:23
teachers adjust. A local English-speaking businessman named Kenji Harayama. Kenji, a pretty
00:03:31
accomplished guitarist, found out that Zach was too. I was very amazed by his songs, his original
00:03:39
songs. And also he played guitar very well. Kenji pulled out an old Gibson, handed it to Zach.
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And he said, consider it yours while you're here. Zach took that guitar to school, trying to break the ice.
00:03:54
I think that that kind of helped break down that barrier a bit. But just three weeks in, overwhelmed by homesickness, he called his parents.
00:04:01
He had had enough. As maybe embarrassing as it is, I was actually crying. And I said to him, you know, I can't do this anymore.
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I want to come home. And we said, no, you made a commitment. You're a man. You gave your word.
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How hard was it to say that? It was really hard. It was really hard, yeah. And I may have probably hung up the phone a bit angry at him
00:04:22
because it wasn't the answer I wanted to get, but in retrospect, I'm really glad.
00:04:26
But Zach tried to make it work. And then one night when the teachers got together,
00:04:32
there was someone new. Another teacher just returning from a sunny vacation. There was this beautiful, tan Georgia coming back from Croatia.
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23-year-old Georgia Robinson, a recent university graduate herself from New Zealand.
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She'd been teaching and living in a nearby town on the coast called Noda. In October, they all went to a karaoke bar.
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I found out she was a huge fan of Kiss. So, you know, myself loving rock and roll, that sparked my interest.
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Did it seem to be the same the other way around? Well, no, actually, because I didn't hear anything from her after that night.
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No idea, but back in New Zealand, George's cousin Chelsea started hearing about a guy named Zach.
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She said that he was a really outgoing and really nice person who was interested in all the same sort of things as her,
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like the same music and the same movies. And then, a few weeks later, she called him.
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And then from then on, we ended up spending progressively more and more time together.
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It was a happier young man who went home to Indiana for Christmas. Zach introduced his parents to Georgia, sort of.
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I met her on Skype. Bless her heart, she had the flu. What did you think about this relationship with a girl so far away We weren putting that much stock in it We were grateful that he had someone to spend time with I was talking to my mom and she like
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so you really care for Georgia, don't you? And I was like, yeah. And my mom got a bit choked up.
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She's like, well, what happens if you move to New Zealand? And I had to assure my mother and say,
00:06:16
that's never going to happen, Mom. Come January, Zach seemed eager to get back to Japan.
00:06:22
And then two months later, Friday, March 11, 2011, the day before his father's birthday.
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I'd actually spent a lot of the day writing my dad a nice big birthday email. I had hit send on that email and was talking to Georgia on Gmail chat.
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Boom. Boom. Everything just began to shake. I was in an office chair with wheels.
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And so immediately as it started, the chairs just kind of began to slide. Zach had never been in an earthquake, but his co-workers knew this one was big.
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Worried that the building might collapse, they ran downstairs and out to the parking lot.
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But soon they were told it was okay. It was over. But when the shaking stopped, the disaster was just beginning.
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There was a monster out there over the horizon called fate. and it was coming very fast.
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Almost as soon as Zach got back to his desk, warning sirens went off and even Zach knew what that meant.
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And if the tsunami was heading to his town of Coogee, two miles inland, what was it going to do on the coast in Noda,
00:07:38
where Georgia was? What had happened to Georgia? Had anyone in her town survived the tsunami?
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It was unrecognizable. The buildings were destroyed. Zach knew he had to find her. And a world away, Zach's parents still hadn't found him.
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This can't be happening. Are you sure it's where Zach is? Friday morning, March 11, 2011.
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In Nashville, Indiana, John and Terry Whitcomb had barely had a sip of their morning tea
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when the news jolted them awake. This was a very powerful earthquake. The images are stunning out of Japan.
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An epic earthquake had hit northern Japan, 9.0 near the top end of the Richter scale.
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And then a huge tsunami crashing up the coast. It was like watching a disaster movie.
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This one horribly real. And John and Terry's son, Zach, was now right in the middle of it.
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What did you think? Unreal. This can't be happening. Are you sure it's where Zach is?
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And we were looking at maps, and, you know, everything was pointing to, yeah, it's exactly where Zach is.
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And, um... So we just prayed. the enormous waves were hitting noda coogee the towns where zach and georgia were teaching
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the frantic calls began to no avail and what happened when you tried to film um it would say
00:09:26
all circuits are busy and that you'd get a busy signal and then the minutes went by
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and an hour and two hours. What did that feel like? Hell. Yeah. As a parent, you never think, oh, my child's been killed.
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You don't think that. You just wait. You just wait and just pray for the best. And remember, Zach had wanted to come home months earlier,
00:09:52
but Terry and John had encouraged him to stay, to live up to his commitment. How much did you beat yourself up about that?
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I did. seemed right then but now it was just the helplessness of we're way over here and
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there's not a thing we can do george's family in new zealand including cousin chelsea were just as
00:10:16
scared and just as helpless one of my friends got a text to say there'd been a massive tsunami in
00:10:23
Japan. Obviously, we all freaked out because George was over there. They turned on the TV and
00:10:30
saw images from Noda, the little coastal town where Georgia was based. It was unrecognizable
00:10:37
from images she'd sent to us. The buildings were destroyed. There was debris everywhere.
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And Georgia, though they tried and tried, was unreachable. We really thought that she'd gone,
00:10:50
kind of lost hope, I guess. Tonight we're watching the rising death toll. The world is watching Japan and our coverage.
00:10:58
Back in Indiana that night, the news ever worse, John turned on his computer and read that last email from Zach.
00:11:07
He sent it at literally two minutes before the earthquake hit. What was it? Birthday greeting.
00:11:13
It said what? Happy birthday. Love you. It said much more than that, though. Dearest Rockin' Poppy,
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Happy Birthday. Woohoo, the big 5-0. The more and more time we spend apart, the more and more I realize
00:11:29
how amazing of a father and friend you have been to me over the years. And have always given me a perfect example
00:11:34
of how a man and a husband is to treat a woman and his wife. My gosh. And I was thinking, God,
00:11:39
is this the last thing I hear from my son? And it's that. Yeah. Good morning, disaster in Japan.
00:11:53
Saturday morning more than 24 hours since they had any communication from their son By 8 we still hadn heard anything And still woke up to even more horrible images And then even had time to think about the death tolls and all that
00:12:10
It was just compounding and compounding and compounding. And then, about the moment all seemed lost,
00:12:18
another email arrived. Not from Zach. It was from Kenji, that volunteer mentor in Japan.
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Just a few words, and they meant everything. Branham's son survived. Basically, that was all it said.
00:12:34
What was that like? Of course we went into more details. It was relief. Zach was alive, all they needed to know, for now.
00:12:46
But Georgia? Still no word. Well, his parents worried about him at home. Zach was riding out the chaos in Coogee.
00:12:55
I wasn't really sure what was going on at first. After the shaking stopped, Zach and his co-workers moved up to the top floor of the Coogee City Hall,
00:13:05
a sort of crow's nest with a view of the whole city and the coastline. So if something's going to happen, this is where you'd see it?
00:13:12
Yeah. And then he saw it. Something about the rivers that split the city and normally flow out to the sea.
00:13:20
The river was beginning to flow in the opposite direction. The water began to change color as well.
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It began going from this kind of bluish color to being very murky. Even four stories up, Zach could hear the roaring river.
00:13:34
It went from just having small debris like trees and other rubbish that was around the harbor and stuff coming into boats and to vehicle, you know, to much larger and much more substantial things coming.
00:13:46
Vehicles, cars and things coming along. Yeah, they must have just been picked up along the coast.
00:13:51
That is getting scary then, right? Yeah. Of course, Zach hadn't seen the footage that everybody outside the country had seen.
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Towns wiped off the map, thousands missing. He couldn't know how bad it was. Did your mind turn at all when you were up here to what's going on down there where Georgia is?
00:14:10
I hoped she would be doing the same thing I was, that she would be in a safe location.
00:14:16
A safe location? Was there such a thing where Georgia was? As the water around him began to recede and Zach and his co-workers came downstairs,
00:14:26
he realized everybody was incredibly quiet. And people's expressions had changed so drastically to these looks of genuine fear.
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That's when I thought, you know, I myself was scared. Now he understood. If the wave got as far as his town further inland, it had to have hit Georgia's town, right on the coast.
00:14:51
What happened to all those people there? To Georgia? And suddenly he knew. He had to find this girl. Just had to.
00:15:00
I wanted to see her and I wanted to comfort her as well. No idea what would be waiting for you at that end.
00:15:06
No, not the slightest. There's a moment in some lives that defines everything that comes after.
00:15:14
A test, a trial. This was Zach Branham's test. To pass or fail. Coming up. I never loved someone the way I loved Georgia.
00:15:27
But sometimes love doesn't conquer all. There's fires on the hill, fire on the water.
00:15:33
And it was a complete scene of destruction. When Dateline continues. Zach Branham didn't fully comprehend how bad it was.
00:15:59
The tremendous earthquake and the deadly wall of water that followed it was snuffing out more than 18,000 lives.
00:16:06
Tens of thousands of homes, whole towns were being swept away. But Zach didn't know that yet.
00:16:14
I just wanted to find Georgia, my best friend, and also I just wanted to make sure she was all right.
00:16:19
Zach kept telling himself she was all right. Noda, the small town on the coast where Georgia lived, was protected by massive concrete seawalls and barriers.
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So your first thought wasn't, oh God, she's in trouble. It was more, thank God there's a wall.
00:16:35
Yes. Yeah, it's there. There's just no possible way that it could have gotten over that.
00:16:41
How did you find out that you were wrong? Well, I decided I just left. I left work.
00:16:48
Back in Indiana, Zach's parents, relieved their son was alive, got another email.
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Zach was going to look for Georgia. Now a whole new set of concerns. Like, I wasn't even exactly sure where she was.
00:17:03
So once we figured that out, we looked it up on the map. Well, it wasn't far away, but we just didn't know.
00:17:09
It was even closer to the coast. It was closer to the coast. Wondering what he might find.
00:17:14
Yes. And he was over there by himself, you know. And what would he do if he didn't find her?
00:17:20
You know, it was just, it was all those things. Zach hopped in his car and began the eight-mile drive down the winding road from Coogee to Noda.
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As I come down the hill, I start noticing people are walking on the side of the road.
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No cars, but they're just walking. Whole family's walking, and I'm just thinking to myself,
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that's odd, you know, that's strange. As I got closer I could see what looked like to be a house on its side just in the middle of the road I was really confused because where were the tsunami walls
00:18:06
Police had set up a barricade, and beyond it, what did you see over there? It was just complete destruction, you know.
00:18:17
There had been, like, for a lot of the houses, they're heated with kerosene. So kerosene tanks had been knocked over throughout the tsunami,
00:18:24
and because of the downed power lines, it actually sparked fires. There was fires on the hill, fire on the water.
00:18:32
Debris everywhere. So, I mean, it was just a complete scene of destruction, really.
00:18:38
Zach, almost in shock, walked toward the barricade blocking the road. There was a police officer, and he just said to me,
00:18:46
dangerous. No. And just kind of began kind of trying to escort me back towards where I had
00:18:52
parked my car. So Zach got in his car and drove back to Coogee, trying to tell himself it would
00:18:58
be OK, that Georgia was fine. The scene behind the barricade was chaos. Disaster was obvious
00:19:06
that there were many casualties. It was pretty clear how many was impossible to know. But Zach
00:19:11
understood as he was turned away by the guard that one person's anxiety could not be allowed
00:19:16
to trump public safety. And yet, at that very moment, he understood with absolute clarity.
00:19:23
He had to find out what happened to the girl behind the barricade. He had to, if she was alive or dead or injured. Had to because she was the love of his life.
00:19:37
He sent message after message by text. in vain, you know, knowing that they weren't going through, but just hoping.
00:19:45
You know, little messages of encouragement. I love you. I hope everything's all right. I'm going to come look for you.
00:19:50
You know, I've tried. Just know I'm coming. What were you thinking? I wouldn't...
00:20:00
I wouldn't know what I'd do without her. I guess that's the first time you really had to be confronted in a serious way, right?
00:20:13
Yeah. I had, um... I never loved someone the way I left Georgia. And, uh... So I...
00:20:38
I guess I just hoped that she was going to be all, you know, she was going to be fine.
00:20:45
I was going to... Probably didn't sleep much that night. No, no. The aftershocks went on all night.
00:20:55
So did tsunami warnings. So you're thinking, is there going to be another tsunami coming through?
00:21:02
You know, it's... So now I didn't really sleep. By 5.30 a.m., he knew what he had to do.
00:21:13
He left a note on his apartment door, just in case Georgia made it there. And I said, Georgia, I'm coming to look for you.
00:21:23
If for some reason you make it into Coogee, stay here. If I haven't found you by sundown, I'm coming right back here.
00:21:29
So know I'm coming back. and then he got in his car again and headed toward the coast and i just decided
00:21:38
literally come hell or high water i was getting into that damn town but how he'd certainly be
00:21:45
facing hell and high water but perhaps the biggest problem was the japanese army blocking the road
00:21:53
Coming up, was time running out for Georgia? Had Zach lost the love of his life?
00:22:03
That feeling that she's not all right, it began growing as each minute went by. As the sun rose over the ruined coastal towns of northern Japan,
00:22:30
Zach Branham approached the barricade outside Georgia's town, Noda, determined to get past it, no idea how.
00:22:36
I parked a little further out this time and started walking in, and they still had the police officers and the defense force there with their roadblock.
00:22:47
But I noticed what looked like to be a group of locals with shovels and other gear.
00:22:52
I'm assuming to go in to try and start clearing paths to the town. So I thought, that's my way in.
00:22:59
Those civilian volunteers seemed to have official permission to get in and clearly knew where they were going.
00:23:07
So I just pulled my head up and hopped in line with them. And at that point, no one was really kind of looking around.
00:23:16
He slipped past the police line, followed the group up a path away from the main road.
00:23:21
He knew where he'd go first, if he could. So your first destination was her apartment?
00:23:27
Yes, yeah. Hoping that I'd find her sitting there on her floor, reading a book. The path led up a hill, descended back down to a horrific scene.
00:23:36
No, that was almost unrecognizable. There were these massive walls of debris, of these houses toppled over, of boats, of, you know, just anything you could imagine.
00:23:46
I mean, metal electric poles just bent as if someone had just come through. But he knew George's place was on a hill.
00:23:55
If she'd gone there before the tsunami hit, she'd be all right. But when he got there...
00:24:01
No sign that she was there. Everything was still left exactly the way we had left it
00:24:07
from the previous morning when we both went to work. As he went back outside, Zach could see down into the center of town.
00:24:16
That's where Georgia's office was, where she was when the earthquake hit. And what he saw chilled him to the bone.
00:24:23
What I could see of the central part of the village that was so destroyed, In my mind, it just, I could not see how.
00:24:31
Nobody survived in that city building. Well, yeah. Shaking that from his mind, Zach thought Georgia might have gone to help out
00:24:38
at one of the three schools where she taught. But when he got to the kindergarten, his heart sank.
00:24:45
The kindergarten was completely gone. Wiped away. Yeah. All that was left was a bit of the fence
00:24:53
and some of the foundation. So. a kindergarten that would have been occupied? I had hoped not.
00:25:04
Later, he found out those children were safe, evacuated before the tsunami hit. But now Zach went to another school,
00:25:11
found a group of teachers huddled in their office. Unable to speak Japanese, he passed around Georgia's business cards with her photo.
00:25:19
And I went in and I just kept asking, Georgia Sensei, where is she? have you seen her? They had not. But they did give Zach some hope. They said,
00:25:34
Chugaku, Chugaku, go junior high, junior high. So I take that as, oh, she's at the junior high.
00:25:41
So Zach sprinted there, made his way to the teacher's room. And I asked him, you know,
00:25:48
have you seen Georgia? And they said they hadn't had not seen her. And I kind of lost it a bit at
00:25:56
that at that point. Zach staggered outside out of options his despair now total. What was
00:26:05
happening in your mind in you? Just just feeling so lost that feeling that I've been trying to
00:26:13
suppress the feeling of she's not all right. It began growing in size immensely as each minute
00:26:21
went by. One of the teachers came outside to comfort him with a cup of tea. Telling me, you know,
00:26:28
it's okay. Dajabu, dajabu. It's okay. It's okay. Hugging me and patting me on the back because I'm
00:26:33
crying. And so, yeah. Then out of nowhere, a van pulled up. Two men hopped out. Zach recognized
00:26:47
one as a colleague of Georgia's. They didn't look happy. Zach tried to ask them. Georgia,
00:26:54
you know, where is she? Where is she? And they didn't say, because they spoke no English and I
00:27:00
spoke no Japanese. They just, just pretty much, like, let's go, pointing to the van and just
00:27:06
kind of pushing me into the van, you know. They were taking him to City Hall. As you were being
00:27:11
driven in that van yeah you have any idea what they were driving you to see no did you know that
00:27:18
they had been taking bodies to the city hall no i no i didn't know that didn't know city hall had
00:27:25
in fact become the temporary morgue was that where he'd find georgia coming up the news everyone had
00:27:33
been waiting for he was very brave for what he did he's very brave but you do that for people
00:27:40
that you love. When Dateline continues. Two men had pushed Zach Branham into the back of a van,
00:27:59
which was now picking its way through canyons of urban rubble, apparently toward
00:28:04
the Notice City Hall. Had Zach known the place had been turned into a temporary moor,
00:28:10
He'd have understood the meaning of the looks on their faces. The van stopped. The men got out.
00:28:16
He said, don't get out, you know, like, like motioning for me to stay in the van That was it He steeled himself for whatever was coming next What he did not expect was what he saw Around the corner he walked out Georgia
00:28:35
And I saw this baseball cap over by a car, and there he was. The last person in the world I expected to see, trudging across the mud in his gumboots.
00:28:48
There was Zach. how was that it was a pretty awesome moment after the absolute insanity of the last 24 hours
00:29:02
it was surreal but it was an amazing feeling at the same time to see him there hair all a bit
00:29:10
frantic you know like she had had no sleep like the rest of us big hug yeah of course
00:29:16
she cried and I cried just one of the best hugs ever knowing that she was safe nice to know that somebody
00:29:28
will go through the barricades do whatever is needed to get to you I just couldn't understand how
00:29:36
Zach had arrived with his baseball cap in the middle of all this it was insane Well, that's the way that we're a girl's heart.
00:29:48
Yeah. Yeah. And Georgia's story? Well, if Zach had been ringside, Georgia was center stage.
00:30:00
And although she'd been through earthquakes before in New Zealand, this one was much, much different.
00:30:06
That's the first time I found it hard to walk or stand in an earthquake. Still, everyone around her seemed okay.
00:30:14
she thought it was all just kind of exciting. Even when the tsunami siren went off.
00:30:22
I was like, oh, cool, this is really exciting. But others knew better, and Georgia soon learned this was very, very bad.
00:30:30
They said, you need to go upstairs. So I followed everyone. We went upstairs, looked out the window, and Noda was gone.
00:30:41
Oh, my God. Georgia saw much of the town of Noda flowing by the window. We're standing right here, looking out there.
00:30:50
This exact spot, yep. It's just quite awesome. Like half the town is up there. Yeah.
00:30:56
And there's a roof here. Yep, there's a roof. There's actually a house wedged in under the entrance.
00:31:03
It's been almost broken in half. Unbelievable. And there's another house drifted across the road.
00:31:10
This house is not usually there. that's just in the middle of the car park. Just for the middle.
00:31:15
Wow. She felt safe up here, somehow detached from the horror she was witnessing.
00:31:22
And then it hit her. There was this moment where it was absolutely silent. And you could hear a dog barking off in the distance.
00:31:31
And occasionally there'd be a shout. But other than that, it was so surreal, so silent.
00:31:39
Wow. Yeah. I won't forget that moment. Water and debris piled up almost to the second floor.
00:31:48
No one could leave. What was that like? That was the worst night of my life. A sleepless night huddled in her boss's office,
00:32:02
missing Zach but thinking he was okay further inland. And the next morning, a jolting aftershock and more tsunami sirens.
00:32:10
But then Zach found her, and together they looked at what was left of the town. 38 people lost their lives in Noda, a tiny percentage of the more than 18,000 who died up and down the coast.
00:32:25
But half of Noda was simply gone. It was like someone had just driven a bulldozer through, and it was all gone.
00:32:33
It was... how a wave can do that? I don't know. lifting complete houses up off their foundations.
00:32:42
So all was left was the shell. The front stairs leading up to nothing And then they went to the safest place they could think of their mentor Kenji office in Kuji where the other teachers had gathered
00:32:57
And you know, Kenji being Kenji, he found all the food that he could find in his house,
00:33:02
anything that we could eat, which included, you know, there was lots of beer and sake
00:33:07
on hand. And music. Zach and Kenji got out the guitars, tried to shut out the world.
00:33:14
to kind of give ourselves some sense that everything was all right a bit, you know.
00:33:20
And then cell phones chirped back to life. So everyone frantically had their phones out,
00:33:25
sending emails to our families, being able to tell them, you know, we're okay. Back in Indiana, Zach's parents finally got the news they've been praying for.
00:33:39
It took me hours and hours, but I found her, and she's alive. And so the first thing I did was call Brenda, George's mom, and she was in bed.
00:33:51
She wasn't asleep. She was trying to sleep. But I said, Zach found her. She's alive.
00:33:58
And she just screamed and started crying. Mom came in and told me that Zach had found her and that she was safe and she was alive.
00:34:10
and that was the most amazing feeling I've ever experienced. He was very brave for what he did.
00:34:18
He was very brave. But you do that for people that you love. The danger wasn't over, of course.
00:34:24
We all know what came next. So you find out that he's okay, she is okay. Now what?
00:34:32
I mean, um... Fukushima. Coming up, a different kind of aftershock. He said, have you checked your email yet?
00:34:42
And I said, no. And he said, why don't you guys look at your email together? And so I said, oh, Zach, what now?
00:34:50
The Fukushima nuclear disaster. Rescue efforts have been complicated by damage to a nuclear power plant.
00:35:11
It filled the airwaves. Potential meltdown. Nuclear Armageddon. The president was calling for Americans to get out.
00:35:19
Yesterday, we called for an evacuation of American citizens who are within 50 miles of the plant.
00:35:25
We were seeing on the news that it's melting down. It's just a matter of time. They can't stop it.
00:35:31
And it could infect the entire country and the entire region of the Earth. Right.
00:35:36
Zach had thought the worst was over. So you never think you'd ever experience a tsunami or earthquake,
00:35:42
and now you're experiencing a meltdown of a nuclear power plant. But we wanted him to come home.
00:35:51
We wanted him. Yeah, we wanted him. Here we were the ones saying, you have to stay.
00:35:55
You made a commitment. Yeah, now it's time for you to come home. Yeah, but there was no travel, of course, anywhere.
00:36:02
Then, Zach got a call from a U.S. Air Force officer. He said, we'll take you to the Air Force base and we'll fly you to a safe location.
00:36:11
So what did you say? Well, I said, you know, I actually lied and said Georgia was my fiancée.
00:36:18
I said, my fiancée is a New Zealand citizen. Can I bring her along? Yeah. And he said, you know, I'm really sorry.
00:36:25
We can only offer this to U.S. citizens at this stage. And I can't leave her behind.
00:36:33
Zach and Georgia were 200 miles north of Fukushima. And as the days passed, they began to feel the danger from the radiation,
00:36:40
at least where they were, was subsiding. So they stayed, even helped with the cleanup.
00:36:49
And then about a month later, funny how these things go, Zach and Georgia got another shock.
00:36:56
Another one of those life-changing developments. Zach told his parents about it during one of their regular Sunday phone calls.
00:37:03
And he said, have you checked your email yet? And I said, no. and he said, why don't you guys look at your email together?
00:37:12
And so I said oh Zach what now After all the worry and dread they experienced over their son time in Japan
00:37:22
Zach Branham's parents weren't quite prepared for the next bit of news. So we opened the email, and there's an ultrasound picture.
00:37:31
A baby was on the way. We were literally speechless. One of the few times in my life I've been speechless.
00:37:38
So we nicknamed it Baby Bean because it looked like a little bean. It just felt right in a way.
00:37:47
We were obviously, are obviously in love, and the timing wasn't amazing, but it had happened,
00:37:57
so let's just go with it. Still, it was one last step. Zach hadn't been quite ready to take it before,
00:38:08
But when he came home to Indiana to see his family. While I was in Indiana in June, my mom and my sisters went with me and we went engagement ring shopping.
00:38:20
What? Did he intend to do that? Would he have done that without a little push, you think?
00:38:25
I don't know. I know that I said, would you marry her if she wasn't expecting a baby?
00:38:32
And he said, yes. And I said, then she needs to know that. she needs you to ask her to marry you, not just it be expected that I'm doing the right thing.
00:38:42
And so, yeah, maybe I did push him. When Zach went back to Japan, he was ready. Or so he thought.
00:38:54
Georgia met him at the train station. As we're walking to the car, I don't know, I just, I said, you just have to stop.
00:39:03
And I was like, what are you doing? it's freezing like let's get in the car let's go and he said just wait and then all of a sudden
00:39:10
he turned around and he's shaking but he's holding a ring box and I got down on my knee and I just
00:39:19
said I love you and I want to spend the rest of my life with you I don't care if it's in Japan or
00:39:24
if it's in New Zealand or you know for in Siberia I want to spend the rest of my life with you and
00:39:29
And I, you know, will you marry me? And I said, yes, of course. I had to put him out of his misery.
00:39:36
He looked like he was going to collapse. So I was engaged and we didn't really know what we were going to do from there or where we were going to go.
00:39:43
But we knew we were having a baby and we were going to get married. In fact, you got married twice.
00:39:48
Yeah, we did. Yeah. Yes. Two weddings. The first in Indiana. The second one in New Zealand.
00:39:56
And there was a special guest at that one Two-month-old Sebastian After promising his mother it was never going to happen
00:40:11
Sure enough, Zach and his family now live in New Zealand He works for the government, Georgia at a recruitment agency
00:40:18
In 2014, we brought them back to Japan for the first time since it all happened My name is Georgia
00:40:26
This teacher and her students knew about Georgia and Zach. Many here looked upon their story as one positive thing
00:40:39
that came out of that horrible tragedy. Do you ever, and this is a totally unfair question,
00:40:49
do you ever sometimes sit together at night and say to yourselves, boy, if it hadn't been for that day,
00:40:54
would we be here would we would we have sebastian would we be in this life together
00:41:00
all the time if someone would have told me three years from now you will be living in wellington
00:41:05
married to an american married to a kiwi with a two-year-old son i i would have said you're crazy
00:41:14
would have thought they were crazy you know so could have never imagined this helped along
00:41:20
by an earthquake, a tsunami, and God knows what else. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah! It's cranky now.
00:41:31
That's all for now. I'm Lester Holt. Thanks for joining us.