in nashville, indiana john and terry whitcomb >>> friday morning, march 11, 2011, in nashville, indianaand terry whitcomb had barely had a sip of their morning tea when the news woke them. >> the images stung out of japan. >> an 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's son zac was now right in the middle of it. >> unreal. this can't be happening. are you sure it's where zac is? are you sure it's in the same region? and we were looking at maps and, you know, everything was pointing to, yeah, it's exactly where zac is. >> so we just prayed. >> enormous waves you see here were hitting noda, kuji, the towns where zac and georgia were teaching. the frantic calls began, to no avail. >> and what happened? >> it would say all circuits are busy and that you'd get a busy signal. >> and then the minutes went by and then an hour and two hours. what did that feel like? >> hell. >> as a parent you never think, oh, my child's been