( CNN ) -- A blue car rushes by in the raging brown water . Moments later a whole family house is carried down the center of the flooded street before an even more frightening sight : a young man trapped in the rising water clinging to a telephone wire . `` Gambatte kudasai ! '' screams out a young voice to the stranded victim , which means `` stay strong '' in Japanese . That voice belongs to 16 year old Mao Takahashi , who used his camera to record the moment the tsunami struck his neighborhood in Ishinomaki , Japan , on March 11 , 2011 . Send in your memories of Japan 's tsunami . It is riveting to watch and has been viewed more than two million times on YouTube . When asked if he felt as if he was recording history for a global audience , Takahashi said he did not think about what he was doing or that he might be recording a piece of history . `` I was simply panicking , '' he explained . In Japan every person in the country has at least one mobile phone and when the tsunami tore across northern Japan , thousands like Takahashi pulled out a device from their pockets and started filming , making last year 's disaster one of the most recorded in history . `` Because you had all of this very real footage , it made the incident much more real in people 's minds . They no longer have to imagine what a tsunami is , they saw it live , '' said Tokyo-based technology consultant Steve Nagata . Nagata points out that Japan is recognizable to many people , even if they have n't visited the country . That familiarity helped people around the world connect to the disaster . The personal nature of the video also brought the disaster home to people around the world and compelled nations and individuals to engage and want to help , said Nagata . `` To be able to do this in near real time and to do it to audiences across the globe is unprecedented in how much power it 's giving to individuals , '' Nagata said . In Takahashi 's case , what his video does n't show when he stopped recording is the most important part of his story . Takahashi took off his clothes , fearing their weight when they got wet and waded into the frigid waters , which had subsided as the tsunami retreated . He then grabbed the young man clinging to the telephone wire -- who was just a few years older than himself -- and carried him back into his house . He does n't know what happened to the young man , other than he survived . Takahashi and his family are now living in temporary housing and their future is still uncertain ; he does n't know where they will finally end up . He still likes to look at the video that 's still on his camera , even though it shows the fury of that traumatizing day . `` It has a happy ending for me , '' he said .
Mao Takahashi recorded moment tsunami struck his home town of Ishinomaki . Teenager 's video watched over two million times on YouTube . Amount of footage of last year 's disaster made it more comprehensible for people across the world .