Brazil to Rescue More Nationals Stranded in Japan's Sendai

The Brazilian embassy in Japan announced on Thursday it would launch a new operation to evacuate Brazilian nationals living in Sendai, one of the hardest hit region in last week's devastating earthquake and tsunami in Japan.

According to the embassy, the operation will take place on Saturday. Besides Sendai, the buses sent by the embassy will also rescue people in the city of Onagawa.

In the first operation on Wednesday, 26 Brazilians and 11 people from other countries were rescued from the damaged regions and taken to Kamisato, in the outskirts of Tokyo.

Though the Brazilian community in Japan is large, amounting to 254,000, only some 800 lived in the area devastated by the quake and tsunami and now affected by the nuclear accident in the Fukushima power plant.

As communications remain difficult in the country, the Brazilian embassy set up a hotline to provide assistance to the Brazilian community in Japan and to their relatives in Brazil, in order to locate the citizens and inform the families of their whereabouts.