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Kento Okuda - Source: Close Up
Kento Okuda lost his leg in the Christchurch earthquake, but one year on, he says the future is looking bright.
Okuda, 20, was eating lunch in between English classes on the third floor of the CTV building when the quake struck, trapping him under a pile of rubble.
As rescue workers swarmed over the building's smouldering ruins, Okuda lay buried underneath, praying he would be found. Thirteen of his classmates were killed in the quake.
"My leg was pinned between some big concrete and another heavy block of concrete and above that there was a desk or some kind of table," he told Close Up's Mark Crysell.
Wellington paramedic Aaron Hartle eventually came across Okuda and told him they would have to amputate his leg to save him
"I just had to tell him that we're here to help him," Hartle said.
The job fell to emergency doctor Anna Sullivan, also from Wellington, who had just escaped the Grand Chancellor Hotel.
After 12 hours of being trapped, she amputated Okuda's right leg at the knee joint and he was slid out by paramedics. That was the last time Sullivan and Hartle saw Okuda.
"He was the one person out of my whole time in Christchurch that I really had an intensive type time with and he was the one person that I really helped," Hartle said.
Okuda, now back in Japan, says he can't remember much from that day.
"It took everything I had to get through the ordeal," he said.
Now he has a new leg, is walking and driving and says the future is bright.
Close Up showed Crysell's interview with Okuda to Hartle and Sullivan, who say they are glad to see him recovering so well.
"He was driving away in the back of an ambulance semi-conscious and looking very sick - that was the last time I saw him," said Hartle.
"So seeing him walking and talking is a remarkable recovery I think."
Sullivan said Okuda was a "good save".
"Yes saving his life is important but it's also important that he can have a life - that he can do stuff," she said.
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