Thousands of rescuers today combed through the wreckage of homes engulfed by landslides in western Japan in the slim hope of finding survivors, a day after a wall of mud claimed at least 39 lives.
Police officers, firefighters and soldiers worked through the night in a desperate bid to find 26 people reportedly unaccounted for among the sludge and rubble.
The number of missing rose from an earlier figure of seven, apparently as more reports came in to local authorities.
Dozens of houses were buried when hillsides collapsed after torrential downpours in Hiroshima that saw more than a month's rain fall in just three hours.
Throughout yesterday there were moments of hope, with survivors who had sought refuge on the upper floors of their homes airlifted to safety, but there were also bodies carried away from the devastation wrapped in blankets or plastic sheeting.
It emerged today that a 53-year-old rescuer who was killed in a secondary landslide the day earlier had died with a toddler in his arms.
Noriyoshi Masaoka, a firefighter with 35 years' experience, had battled through the slurry of the initial mountain collapse to rescue five people, before going back to help more.
The Tokyo Shimbun said a man and his three-year-old son were among a party of eight he was trying to rescue.
A witness told the paper the father had thrown his son into Masaoka's arms as he saw the second wave of mud and rocks beginning to cascade down the hillside.
He watched helplessly as the suffocating tide swallowed both the child and his would-be rescuer.
The bystander said the grief-stricken father remained where he was, just shouting his son's name and unscathed by the landslip that claimed the young boy's life.
Members of a local high school baseball team were among teenagers who kept up an all-night vigil for one of their number, whose half-submerged house was the focus of floodlit efforts.
"I saw tweets (saying he was missing)," one youngster told Fuji Television.
"We went to the same junior high school. I want him to be found as soon as possible because he must be in pain," the boy said.
The network said the search at what remained of the property continued today but neither the boy, nor his father, had been found.
