Diane Sawyer Reflects on Tsunami Disaster

THAILAND and INDONESIA, Jan. 6, 2005 — -- Thai. Swiss. Sumatran. American.

This is a tragedy that has only one noble purpose -- reminding us that we're not a planet of strangers after all, but just different faces, each with striving, longing, strengths, fragile hope.

As we traveled thousands of miles by helicopter, plane, ship, car and foot, it remained impossible to register that all of our mighty modern engines can do nothing against an earthquake -- the equivalent of a hundred atom bombs in a single heave -- and the wall of water it spawned.

Watch the home videos again: All the portraits of unrelenting force and human disbelief. So many of the people running, yelling to their loved ones, fighting with all of their courage and strength, but they could not make it.

The ones who did survive simply astonished us:

And of course, there also was the father and sister from Salt Lake City who came to a day after day to search photographs of the bodies at a Thailand morgue -- and then, on the eighth day, with us by their side, saw the red halter top in one photo that extinguished hope.

"This is her shirt -- the one that she bought," said Shonti Breisch, 18, of her 15-year-old sister Kali.

"Oh, my God!" said the teens' father, Dr. Stuart Breisch, weeping.

We walked through the makeshift morgue. It was tough, for the smell, and the scope. And we marveled at all the dedication of volunteers there from all over the world, who came to this grim place just to help clean and carry the dead.

Meanwhile, the monks were working overtime, in shifts, praying as Buddhism teaches, that the 150,000 wandering spirits would find peace.

And there was already light, beyond religion.