•    HOME   
•    NEWS   
•    BUSINESS   
•    INTERNATIONAL   
•    TECH   
•    SPORTS   
•    LIFE & TIMES   
•    OPINION   
•    MY JAKARTA   
•    BLOGS   
•    EYEWITNESS   

At least 25 Indonesians are among the thousands of people missing after Friday’s deadly earthquake and tsunami in Japan, a survivor said on Sunday.

Hariyadi Budi, an Indonesian interior designer working in Sendai, the region closest to the epicenter of the 9.0-magnitude quake, said 25 Indonesian fishermen working in the coastal town of Shiogama in Miyagi prefecture were still unaccounted for.

Speaking by phone to the Jakarta Globe, Hariyadi said he was on his way back to Sendai after trying to reach Shiogama and being forced to turn back because the road was blocked.

“The fishermen’s workplace located on the coast is now submerged in seawater, as the coastline has moved about three kilometers inland,” he said.

Hariyadi added that over the past two years, he had been in frequent communication with the fishermen.

Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa confirmed that at least four Indonesian fishermen in Shiogama had been declared missing.

“Officials have confirmed that some Indonesians went missing during the tsunami and have not been found,” he said at a press conference.

He said the four men were working on a tuna boat that had been anchored in Shiogama when the tsunami hit.

“The boat was found 2.5 kilometers from the shore, but there was no trace of any crew,” Marty said, adding that his office had been trying to contact the men’s families in Indonesia.

The Foreign Ministry said its embassy in Tokyo had been able to contact 121 Indonesians in Sendai, where they are sheltering in Sanjo Junior High School, and would evacuate them to Tokyo.

The school building is one of six shelters in Sendai set up by the Japanese authorities, the ministry said.

Ministry spokeswoman Kusuma Habir told the Globe that the embassy had also sent a team to pick up six Indonesians in neighboring Fukushima prefecture, where a possible meltdown at a quake-damaged nuclear power plant is feared.

All Indonesian evacuees will be sheltered at an Indonesian school building in Tokyo’s Meguro ward, Kusuma said.

Hariyadi said he had been prevented from driving out to check on other Indonesians in his area because of a fuel shortage.

He also said that while phone lines had begun working again on Sunday, there was still no electricity, “so we [can’t] charge our mobile phones or turn on the heater.”

There are 31,517 Indonesians working in Japan, according to the Manpower and Transmigration Ministry. Another 8,006 are there on three-year internship programs in 62 business sectors.