Everything just began to shake just kept asking where does she have have you seen her I Would know what I'd do without it. It looked like the world was ended growing up in Indiana So now he's in a quakes of the things that you only see in Hollywood films He was sure his world had ended the love of his life was missing that feeling that she's not all right He came growing as each minute might buy strangers in a strange land They'd fallen in love then the quake hit and all he knew was that her town was gone They're like a power high water. I was getting into that damn town And that's where he headed right into that hell willing to risk his life to try to save hers There's fires on the hill fire on the water, but could he get there in time? I never love someone.
I love Georgia I'm Lester Holt, and this is Dateline. Here's Keith Morrison with swept away Who can say what lurks out there past the horizon waiting impersonally utterly at random as thousands of lives ticked to their unknowing ends And simple coincidence a young man from middle America made a single decision Could you imagine back there in Indiana that you're about to make your life flip on its head this way? No, no never How could he know that on the other side of the world a young woman made exactly the same decision or that? They'd meet practically on the eve of one of the biggest natural disasters in recent memory Or how could he know that in the middle of disaster he'd lose her?
I would know what I do without her So coincidence love disaster. There is no fairness about these things. They just are Zach Brown in turn 23 in 2010 I just picked up a degree in history from a college in Indiana No idea what to do next and then he saw an offer for a job in Japan The two-year stint teaching English to elementary school kids. No Japanese language skills required quite a pan of all places I don't think there's any rhyme reason to it.
I think it was just offered to me and I jumped on it The town they set up to in Japan called kuji was a long long way from its hometown of Nashville Nashville, Indiana On Sunday, she's kiked with his parents John and Terry with you. How did he seem to be doing? It was rough at first. Mm-hmm.
The language thing was was the big thing. You were a stranger on a strange land. Yes. Yeah Was it a lonely feeling?
Mm-hmm. Yeah, it was 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 teachers adjust a local English-speaking businessman named Kenji Haryana Kenji a pretty accomplished guitarist found out that Zach was too. I was a bit amazed by his songs He's always in a song and also he played guitar very well Kenji pulled out an old Gibson handed it to Zach and he said consider yours while you're here Zach took that guitar to school trying to break the ice.
I think that that kind of helped break down that barrier a bit But just three weeks in overwhelmed by home sickness. He called his parents. He had had enough as maybe embarrassing as it is I was I was actually crying and I said to him, you know, I can't do this anymore. I want to come home And we said No, you may commit that you're a man.
You gave your word. How hard was it to say that? It was really hard. Yeah And I may have probably hung up the phone a bit angry at him because it wasn't the answer I wanted to get but in retrospect, I'm really glad but Zach tried to make it work And then one night when the teachers got together there was someone new another teacher just returning from a sunny vacation It was this beautiful tan Georgia coming back from Croatia 23 year old Georgia Robinson a recent university graduate herself from New Zealand She'd been teaching and living in a nearby town on the coast called Noda in October.
They all went to a karaoke bar I found out she was a huge fan of kiss So, you know myself loving rock and rolling that spark my interest didn't seem to be the same the other way around well No, actually, but I because I I I didn't hear anything from her after that night No idea that back in New Zealand, Georgia's cousin Chelsea started hearing about a guy named Zach She said that he was really outgoing and really nice person who was interested in all the same sort of things There's got the same music and the same movies and then a few weeks later She called him and then from then on we ended up sending progressively more and more time together It was a happier young man who went home to Indiana for Christmas Zach introduced his parents to Georgia sort of I met her on Sky but bless her heart. She had the flu. What did you think about this relationship with a girl so far away? We weren't putting that much stock in it.
We were grateful that he had someone Despentine with I was talking to my mom and she's like so you really you really care for Georgia, don't you? I was like, yeah, and my mom got a bit choked up Well, what happens if you moved to New Zealand and I had to assure my mother and say that's never gonna happen mom Come January Zach seemed eager to get back to Japan and then two months later Friday March 11, 2011 The day before his father's birthday. I'd actually spent a lot of the day riding my dad a nice big birthday email I had hit send on that email and was talking to Georgia on Gmail chat Everything just began to shake I was in there on office chair with wheels and so immediately as I started the chairs just kind of began to slide Zach had never been in a birthday But his coworkers knew this one was big Worried that the building might collapse they ran downstairs and out to the parking lot but soon they were told it was okay It was over but when the shaking stopped the disaster was just beginning there was a monster out there over the horizon called fate and it was coming very fast Well, almost as soon as Zach got back to his desk Warning sirens went off and even Zach knew what that meant and if the tsunami was heading to his town of Gucci two miles in What was it going to do on the coast in Noda where Georgia was? What had happened to Georgia had anyone in her town survived the tsunami?
It was unrecognizable the buildings were destroyed Zach knew he had to find her at a world away. Zach's parents still hadn't found him. This can't be happening Are you sure it's where Zach is? Friday morning March 11th 2011 in National, Indiana John and Terry Woodkin had barely had a sip of their morning tea when the news jolted them awake This was a very powerful earthquake the images are stunning out of Japan and epic earthquake had hit northern Japan 9.0 near the top end of the Richter scale And then a huge tsunami crashing up the coast.
It was like watching a disaster movie This one horribly real and John and Terry Sun Zach was now right in the middle of it What did you think? Unreal. This can't be happening. Are you sure it's where Zach is and we were looking at maps and you know Everything was pointing to yeah, it's exactly where Zach is and He just prayed The enormous waves were hitting Noda, Gucci, the towns where Zach and Georgia were teaching The frantic calls began to know avail And what happened when you tried this one?
It would say all circuits are busy and that you'd get a busy signal and then the minutes went by An hour and two hours. What did that feel like? Hell Yeah, as a parent you never think oh my child's been killed You don't think that you just just wait you just wait and just pray for the best And remember Zach had wanted to come home months earlier, but Terry and John had encouraged him to stay to live up to his commitment How much did you beat yourself about that? I did Seemed right then but now it's just the helplessness of we're way over here and there's not a thing we can do Georgia's family in New Zealand including cousin Chelsea were just as scared and just as helpless one My friends got a text to say they've been a mess of tsunami in Japan.
Obviously, we all freaked out. I mean that's George was over there It turned on the TV and saw images from Noda the little coastal town where Georgia was based It was unrecognizable from images she had seen to us the buildings were Destroyed there was a debris everywhere and Georgia though. They tried and tried it was unreachable We really thought that should gone kind of lost hope peace tonight We're watching the rising death toll. The world is watching Japan and our coverage back in Indiana that night The news ever worse John turned on his computer and read that last email from Zach He sent it literally ten minutes before the earthquake hit.
I was celebrating birthday greeting. I said what? Happy birthday. Love you.
It said much more than that though dearest rock and poppy happy birthday Woohoo the big five though the more and more time we spend apart the more and more I realize how amazing of a father and friend You have been to me over the years and have always given me a perfect example of how a man and a husband is to treat a woman And his wife. Oh my gosh, and I was thinking God is this the last thing I hear from my son, you know And it's that Good morning disaster in Japan really Saturday morning more than 24 hours since they've had any communication from their son My 830 and we still hadn't heard anything and still woke up to more even more horrible images and then in ten times I think about the death tolls and All that it was just compounding and compounding and compounding And then about the moment all seemed lost another email arrived not from Zach. It was from Kenji that volunteer mentor in Japan Just a few words and they meant everything Brandon's son Survived basically that was all that what was that like? Of course we didn't want to be Zach was alive all they needed to know for now, but Georgia still no word Well, his parents worried about him at home.
Zach was writing out the chaos in kuji. I wasn't really Sure what was going on at first after the shaking stop Zack and his coworkers moved up to the top floor of the kuji city hall a sort of crows nest with the view of the whole city and the coastline So if something's gonna happen, this is where you'd see yeah And then he saw it something about the rivers that split the city and normally flow out to the sea River was beginning to flow in the opposite direction the water began to change color as well began going from this kind of bluish color to being very murky Even four stories up Zach could hear the roaring river It went from just having a small debris like trees and another reddish that was around the harbor and stuff coming into boats and to vehicle You know it's much larger and much more substantial things and vehicles cars and things that along that yeah They must have picked up along the coast. That is getting scary then right? Yeah, of course Zack hadn't seen the footage that everybody outside the country had seen towns wiped off the map thousands missing You couldn't know how bad it was.
Did your mind turn at all when you're up here to what's going on down there? We're Georgia. I hope she would be doing the same thing. I was it she would be in a safe location A safe location was there such a thing where Georgia was as water around to begin to recede and Zack and his coworkers came downstairs You realized everybody was incredibly quiet and people's expressions had changed so drastically to these looks of genuine fear That's when I thought, you know, I myself was scared Now he understood if the way I've got as far as his town further inland it had to have hit Georgia's town right on the coast what happened to all those people there to Georgia and suddenly he knew he had to find this girl Just had to I wanted to see her and I wanted to comfort her as well.
No idea. What would be waiting for you that in now the slightest There's a moment in some lives that defines everything that comes after a test to trial This was Zack Branham's test to pass or fail Coming up, I never loved someone I loved her but sometimes love doesn't conquer all There's fires on the hill fire on the water and it was a complete scene of destruction When Dateline continues Zack Branham didn't fully comprehend how bad it was The tremendous earthquake and the deadly wall of water that followed it was snuffing out more than 18,000 lives Tens of thousands of homes all towns were being swept away, but Zack didn't know that yet I just wanted to find Georgia my best friend and also I just wanted to make sure he was all right Zack kept telling himself she was all right. No to the small town on the coast where Georgia lived was protected by massive concrete sea walls barriers So your first thought wasn't oh God she's in trouble. It was more.
Thank God. There's a wall. Yes. Yeah, it's there There's just no possible way that it could have gotten over that.
How did you find out that you were wrong? Well, I decided I just left I left work back in Indiana Zack's parents relieved their son I got another email Zack was going to look for Georgia now a whole new set of concerns like I Wasn't even exactly sure where she was so once we figured that out we looked it up on the map wasn't far away, but We just didn't know closer to the coast wondering what he might find Yeah, he was over there by himself, you know, and what would he do if he didn't find her, you know? It was just it was all those things That caught in his car. I began the eight-mile drive down the winding road from Coogee to noted as I come down the hill I start noticing people are walking on the side of the road.
No cars, but they're they're just walking whole families walking and I Just saying to myself. That's 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 we're the tsunami walls Polisia set up a barricade and beyond it.
What did you see over there? It was just complete complete destruction, you know There had been a like for a lot of the houses are heated with kerosene So kerosene tanks have been knocked over throughout the tsunami and because of the down power lines actually sparked fires Fires on the hill fire on the water debris everywhere. Yeah, so I mean it was a just complete scene destruction really Zack almost in shock walked toward the barricade blocking the road It was a police officer and he just said to me dangerous No, and just kind of began kind of trying to escort me back towards where I had parked my car So Zack got in his car and drove back to Coogee trying to tell himself it would be okay that Georgia was fine But the scene behind the barricade was chaos disaster was obvious that there were many casualties was pretty clear How many was impossible to know but Zack understood as he was turned away by the guard that One person's anxiety could not be allowed to trump public safety And yet at that very moment he understood with absolute clarity 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 a lot of his life He sent message after message by text in vain, you know knowing that they weren't going through but just hoping You know little messages of encouragement. I love you.
I hope everything's all right. I'm gonna come look for you You know, I've tried just know I'm coming but were you thinking I wouldn't Um, I would know what I'd do without her because that's the first time you really had to confront it in a serious way, right? Yeah, I had um, I never loved someone. I loved Georgia and uh, so I I guess I just hope that she was gonna be all, you know, it's just gonna be fine.
That's gonna Probably didn't sleep much anything. No, no The aftertocks went on all night so did tsunami warnings So you're thinking is there gonna be another tsunami coming through? You know, sis is Um, but I didn't really sleep At 5 30 a.m. He knew what he had to do.
He let the note on his apartment door just in case Georgia made it fair And I said Georgia, I'm coming to look for you If for some reason you make it into kooji stay here If I haven't found you by sundown, I'm coming right back here. So no, I'm coming back And then he got in his car again and headed toward the coast And I just decided literally come hell or high water. I was getting into that damn town But how he'd certainly be facing hell and high water But perhaps the biggest problem was the Japanese army blocking the road Coming up was time running out for Georgia had zag lost the love of his life That feeling that she's not all right. It began growing as each minute went by There's the sun rose over the ruin coastal towns of northern japan Zag Branham approached the barricade outside Georgia town noted determined to get past it.
No idea how I parked a little further out this time And so Started walking in and they still had the police officers and the defense force there with their roadblock But I noticed what looked like to be a group of locals with shovels and other gear I'm assuming to go into try and start clearing paths to the town So I thought that's my way in Those civilian volunteers seemed to have official permission to get in and clearly knew where they were going So I just pulled my hood up and hopped in line with him and at that point No one was really kind of looking around He stood past the police line followed the group up a path away from the main road He knew where he'd go first if he could so your first destination was her apartment Open eye finder sitting there on the floor reading a book the path led up a hill descended back down to a horrific scene Note it was almost unrecognizable There were these massive walls of debris of these houses toppled over a boats of you know There's anything you can imagine, you know, I mean Metal electricals just bent as if someone had just come through and just be But he knew Georgia's place was on a hill if she'd gone there before the tsunami hit she'd be all right But when he got there no sign that she was there everything was still left exactly the way We had left it from the previous morning when both went to work As he went back outside so I could see down into the center of town That's where Georgia's office was where she was when the earthquake hit And what he saw showed him to the bone What I could see of the central part of the village that was so destroyed in my mind It's just I could not see how nobody's arrived in that city building Well, yeah Shaking that from his mind Zach thought Georgia might have gone help out at one of the three schools where she taught But when he got to the kindergarten his heart sank The kindergarten was completely gone Wiped away Yeah, they were all that was left was a bit of a fence and some of the foundation So a kindergarten that would have been occupied I had hoped not Later he found out those children were safe evacuated before the tsunami hit But now Zach went to another school found a group of teachers huddled in their office Unable to speak Japanese he passed around Georgia's business cards with her photo And I went in and I just kept asking you know Georgia since they you know Where is she? Have you seen her? They had not but they did give Zach some hope They said Chewbacca, Chewbacca, go junior high junior high So I take that as oh she's at the junior high So Zach sprinted there made his way to the teachers room And I asked them you know, have you seen Georgia? And they said they hadn't had not seen her and I kind of lost it a bit at that At that point Zach staggered outside out of options.
He's despair now total What was happening in your mind didn't you? Just Just feeling so lost that feeling that I've been trying to suppress the feeling of she's not all right It began growing in size immensely as each minute went by One of the teachers came outside to comfort him with a cup of tea Telling me, you know, it's okay. That's okay. That's okay.
It's okay. Hugging me and patting me on the back because I'm crying and some Yeah Then out of nowhere a fan pulled up two men hopped out Zach recognized one as a colleague of Georgia's They didn't look happy Zach tried to ask them Georgia, you know, where is she where is she and they didn't say Because they spoke no English and I spoke to Japanese they're just just pretty much Just like let's go point of the van and just kind of pushing me to the van, you know They were taking into city hall As you were being driven in that van, did you have any idea of what they were driving you to see? No, did you know that they had been taking bodies to the city hall? No, I know I didn't know that didn't know City Hall had in fact become the temporary morgue.
Was that where he'd find Georgia? Coming up the news everyone had been waiting for He was very bright, but we did He was very bright, but you do that for people that he loved? My take on continues Two men had pushed Zach Brandon at the back of a van Which was now picking its way through canyons of urban rubble apparently toward the notice city hall Had Zach known the place had it turned into a temporary morgue He'd have understood the meaning of the looks on their faces. The van stopped.
The men got out He said don't get out, you know, he's like motioning for me to stay in the van That was it. He steeled himself for whatever was coming past What he did not expect was what he saw Around the corner Walked out Georgia 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 gun boots There was Zach How was that? It was a pretty awesome moment after The absolute insanity of the last 24 hours It was surreal that it was an amazing feeling at the same time to see him there Hair all a bit frantic, you know, like she had no sleep like the rest of us big hug Yeah, of course. She cried and I cried Just one of the best hugs ever, you know knowing that uh She was safe Nice to know that somebody will go through the barricades do whatever he's needed to get to I just couldn't understand how Zach had arrived with his baseball cap in the middle of all this It was insane Well, that's the way well girls hard Yeah And Georgia's story Well, if Zach had been ringside, Georgia was center stage And although she'd been through earthquakes before in New Zealand, this one was much much different That's the first time I found it hard to walk or stand in an earthquake Still everyone around her seemed okay.
She thought it was all just kind of exciting Even when the tsunami siren went off. It's like, oh cool This is really exciting But others knew better and Georgia soon learned this was very very bad I said you need to go upstairs. So I followed everyone we went upstairs looked out the window and Noda was gone. Oh my god Georgia saw much of the town of Noda flowing by the window.
We're standing right here looking out there That's the exact spot. Yep It's just quite awesome like the half the town is up there. Yeah, there's a roof here Yep, there's a roof which there's actually a house wedged in under the entrance It's been almost broken in half. I'll believe it one.
There's another House drifted across the road. This house is not usually there That's just in the middle of the car park. Just for now. No Wow She fell safe up here somehow detached from the horror she was witnessing And then it hit her.
There was this moment where it was absolutely silent And you can hear a dog barking off in the distance and occasionally there'd be a shout But other than that it was so surreal so silent. Well, yeah, I won't forget that moment Water and debris piled up almost to the second floor. No one could leave What was that like? That was the worst night of my life The sleepless night huddled in her boss's office missing Zach but thinking he was okay for their inland And the next morning a jolting aftershock and more tsunami sirens But then Zach found her and together they looked at what was left of the time 38 people lost their lives in Nota The tiny percentage of the more than 18,000 who died up and down the coast but half of Nota was simply gone It was like someone who had just driven a bulldozer through and it was all gone.
It was How a wave can do that? I don't know lifting complete houses up after a foundation So it always 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's office in Gucci Were the other teachers had gathered And you know Kenji being Kenji he found all the food that he could find in his house Anything that we could eat which included you know, there's lots of beer and sake on hand and music Zach and Kenji got out the guitars tried to shut out the world to kind of give ourselves some sense that everything was all right You know and then cell phones trip back to life Everyone frantically had their phones out sending emails to our families being able to tell them you know we're We're okay Back in Indiana's ex parents finally got the news they've been praying for it took me hours and hours that I found her and she's alive And so the first thing I did was called Brenda George's mom And she was in bed. She wasn't asleep. She was trying to sleep, but And I said that counter she's alive And she just screamed and started crying Mom came in and told me that dad could found her And that she was safe and she was alive And that was the most amazing feeling I've ever experienced.
He was very brave for what he did He's very brave, but you do that for people that you love the danger wasn't over of course We all know what came next So you find out that he's okay. She is okay now what I mean Fukushima Coming up a different kind of aftershock. He said have you checked your email yet? And I said no He said why don't you guys look at your email together?
And so I said oh Zach what now The Fukushima nuclear disaster rescue efforts have been complicated by damage to a nuclear power plant It filled the airways potential meltdown nuclear Armageddon the president was calling for americans to get out Yesterday we called for an evacuation of american citizens who are within 50 miles of the plant We were seeing on the news that it's melting down. It's just a matter of time. They can't stop it And it could in fact entire country entire region of the earth Right. Zach had thought the worst was over.
So you never think you'd ever experienced a tsunami or earthquake and now you're experiencing A meltdown of a nuclear power plant, but we we wanted to come home. We wanted to I mean here. We were the ones saying you want to stay you made a commitment. Yeah, it's time for you to come home Yeah, but there was there was no travel of course anywhere 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 So what'd you say? Well, I said, you know, I actually lied and said Georgia was my fiance. I said my fiance is a New Zealand citizen You know gonna bring her along. Yeah, and he said, you know, I'm really sorry We can only offer this to to us citizens at this stage And we can't leave it behind Zach and Georgia were 200 miles north of Fukushima and as the days passed they began to feel the danger from the radiation at least where they were Was subsiding so they stayed even helped with the cleanup and then about a month later funny how these things go Back in Georgia got another shock another one of those life-changing developments Zach told his parents about it during one of their regular Sunday phone calls And he said, um, have you checked your email yet?
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? After all the worry of dread that experience over their son's time in Japan Zach random's parents weren't quite prepared for the next bit of noon So we open the email and there's an ultrasound picture a baby was on the way We were literally as facials one of them a few times in my life. I've been speechless So we nicknamed it baby bean because it was like a little bean it just It felt right in a way.
We were obviously well obviously in love and the timing wasn't amazing But it had happened. So let's just go with it Still it was one last step Zach hadn't been quite ready to take it before but when he came home to Indiana to see his family While I was in Indiana in June, my mom, my sisters went with me and yeah, we went engagement ring shopping What did he intend to do that? What do you've done that with that little push you think? Um I don't know.
I know that I said Would you marry her if she wasn't expecting a baby? And he said yes And I said then she needs to know that she needs you to ask her to marry you not just be expected But I'm doing the right thing and so yeah, maybe I did pushing When Zach went back to Japan, he was ready or so he thought Georgia met him at the train station As we're walking to the car, I I don't know. I just I just you just have to stop What are you doing? It's freezing like let's get in the car Let's go and he's just wait and then all of a sudden he turned around and he's shaking but he's holding a ring box And I got down on my knee and I just said I love you and I I want to spend the rest of my life with you I don't care if it's in Japan or if it's in New Zealand or you know for in Siberia I want to spend the rest of my life with you and and don't you know, will you marry me?
And I said yes, of course. I had to put him out of his misery. He looked like he was going to collect Oh, so I was engaged and we didn't really know what we were going to do from there Where we were going to go, but we knew we were having a baby and we were going to get married and back to you got married twice Yeah, we did yeah Yes, two weddings The first in Indiana the second one in New Zealand and there was a special guest at that one two-month-old Sebastian Getting real getting some good distance after promising his mother. It was never going to happen sure enough Zach and his family now live in New Zealand.
He works for the government Georgia at a recruitment agency In 2014 we brought them back to Japan for the first time since it all happened My name is Georgia This teacher and her students knew about Georgia and Zach many here looked upon their story as one positive thing that came out of that horrible tragedy Do you ever and this is a totally unfair question to you ever sometimes sit together and I'd say yourself boy If it hadn't been for that day Would we be here? Would we would we have Sebastian? Would we be in this life together? All the time if someone would have told me three years from now, you will be living in Wellington Married to an American married to a Kiwi with a two-year-old son.
I would have seen you crazy I would have thought they were crazy, you know, so could have never imagined this helped along by an earthquake a tsunami. God knows what else. Yeah, yeah, yeah Thank you That's all for now. I'm Lester Holt.
Thanks for joining us I'm Craig Malthus. Cheers. Cheers. I've always been a glass half old kind of guy And now I'm talking to some people who look at the world that way too.
Some really fascinating folks who shared their defining moments Their trials the challenges their stories are funny, and I can't so I hope you'll join me each week knows You might just come away with your own glass half full search glass apple with Craig Malthus from today on youtube Wherever you get your podcasts