No Vietnamese confirmed dead in Japan quake
The Tokyo-based Vietnam News Agency correspondent reported that no name of Vietnamese nationals was included in the list of 564 deaths and over 1,000 missing announced by the Japanese Police Agency on March 12. Until now, no Vietnamese in Japan was reported dead in the most devastating disaster.
The Tokyo-based Vietnam News Agency
correspondent reported that no name of Vietnamese nationals was included
in the list of 564 deaths and over 1,000 missing announced by the
Japanese Police Agency on March 12. Until now, no Vietnamese in Japan
was reported dead in the most devastating disaster.
The President of the Vietnamese Youth and Students’ Association
(VYSA) in Japan , Nguyen Ngoc Tu, told VNA that he had reached Hai
Duong-born Dong Quang Diep, a student at the Tohoku University in
Sendai city by paging on March 12. Sendal is capital of Miyagi
refecture, the hardest hit by the recent earthquake and tsunami.
He quoted Diep as saying that his Vietnamese fellows, estimated at
between 30 and 40, were evacuated to shelters erected by the Sendai
administration.
“It is lucky that the university
is located in a high place so all the students are safe and no one was
reported injury,” Diep was quoted as saying.
However, the power, water supply and gas systems in the region have not resumed operation.
The VYSA leader however expressed concerns over the fate of other
students following education in provinces adjacent to Miyagi such as
Aomori, Akita, Iwate and Fukushima, though in small numbers.
Four Vietnamese engineering interns working in a site about 30
minutes by tram to Sendai were reported safe in shelters. At the
point the deadly quake occurred on March 11, these people were still at
the workplace. They were immediately evacuated to the existing safe
shelters, avoiding the workplace destruction by the disaster.
Relevant Vietnamese agencies are working hard to contact these
workers to determine the number of Vietnamese workers evacuated to these
shelters and the fate of others.
Statistics
released by the Vietnamese embassy in Japan showed that some 31,000
Vietnamese nationals are living in Japan, including permanent
residents. Of them, some 3,700 are students and almost 17,000 interns or
apprentices./.