An 8-month-old girl was pulled alive from the rubble of a collapsed house in Mashiki, Kumamoto Prefecture, in the early hours on Friday morning, more than six hours after a devastating quake pummeled the area.
More than 50 policemen and firefighters were involved in the rescue effort at the home of Asami Nishimura, where the building's second floor had collapsed. Nishimura's daughter, Miku, was asleep downstairs when the quake struck.
The workers persevered amid aftershocks and the smell of leaking gas, and shortly before 4 a.m. on Friday a cry of joy went up as the child was found unharmed, lying in a narrow space in the wreckage.