Defiant Japanese boat captain rode out tsunami

 http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/asiapcf/04/03/japan.tsunami.captain/?hpt=C1

This is a very interesting video and story. It seems a 68 year old boat captain who lives out on one of the islands off of northeastern Japan felt the quake, and heard the tsunami warning but instead of running for higher ground like the rest of the people on the island, he ran for his boat. He knew if he didn't do this that his island would be isolated because all the boats would be destroyed or driven on shore. So, he tried to save his large 40 year old boat. His is the only boat on the island to survive the tsunami and now he supplies the whole island with food and gas for vehicles from the mainland. For 20 days he has been making hourly trips to the mainland to supply his island with food and necessities.

He describes what it was like to survive the tsunami. As he headed out towards the tsunami he said it was a 20 to 30 meter high wall of water.(20 meters is 65.61+ feet and 30 meters is:98.425+ feet) He didn't know if he or the boat would survive. As he crashed into the first tsunami wave, he said it began to break on him and his boat and he wasn't sure at this point whether he or the boat would survive. Somehow he made it through and then started his steep descent down the back of the wave. But this was only the first of 4 or 5 tsunami waves. He said he was pretty dizzy from the concussions of force upon his boat after the first one but having successfully survived the first one he used the same method to survive the others. After he spent the whole day pumping the water out of his engine room so he could stay afloat and functional he headed back home to his island.

He said the fires on the mainland at Kesunnunma city lit his island which was completely dark that night when he returned home to his island. Otherwise he couldn't see it it was so dark as all power to the island had been knocked out.

Now he is the only boat keeping his island people alive and making hourly trips to the mainland every hour  and he is now a hero for Japan as they need one during these difficult times.   

He is one of the few to ride a tsunami and to live to tell the tale. 

There was another earthquake in Alaska in 1964 that mostly destroyed Anchorage, Alaska. It was a 9.2 Earthquake and the biggest then in recorded history. There was a similar story of a man in a fishing trawler with his I believe 10 year old son. I read this account in Reader's Digest in 1964 as I was then 16 years old then. 

The  man said he and his son looked out to sea and were within a few miles of shore there in Alaska fishing. There was a wall of water that he believes was about 100 feet high. The wave was coming fast and in the process of getting ready to break upon the shore so it wasn't a wall like the japanese man faced. It was a more gradual ascent rather than crashing into it like the Japanese captain had to. The American fishing trawler crawled up the face of the breaking 100 foot high wave and with the engine screaming at 110% he just barely made it over the crest before the wave broke. What the man said was that cresting the wave wasn't the hardest thing. He said when the wave broke it went up about 500 feet high into the land and ripped out of the ground hundreds and thousands of huge tall  pine and fir trees. And the fisherman said the hardest thing was dodging all the trees with his boat so he wouldn't sink after the wave ripped them loose and dragged them all out to sea. He said this was very very difficult to dodge thousands of large trees and their root systems out to sea with him. He also said anyone on shore below 500 to 1000 feet in elevation didn't survive the tsunami where he was.

If you want to read about this quake:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1964_Alaska_earthquake