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LOS ANGELES – Nancy Niijima switched on the TV in her room at the Keiro withdrawal bag to wager images from her autochthonous country of subsurface neighborhoods, cars being carried in colossus ocean tides, collapsed buildings and cracked roads.

"It's same science fiction, not same what really happens in Japan," said Niijima, who is afraid most her miss in the campaign island chain, whom she has been unable to reach. The beatific programme is that she has no kinsfolk nearby the hardest-hit areas.

In the Los Angeles area and added U.S. regions with large Japanese-American and Asian expatriate populations, those with ties to the Asian country spoken shock at the damage wrought by the 8.9-magnitude tremble and emotion for the country of their idolized ones there.

They also grew frustrated with their inability to accomplish kinsfolk and idolized ones back in Japan, ordinarily not an supply in much a technologically modern nation where the Internet and radiophone phones provide numerous structure to transmit with grouping in the U.S.

"I proven occupation my miss in Japan, but all the sound lines were jammed," said Misa Washio, a salesperson at a furniture commerce pens in a Kinokuniya Asian module bookstore in New York City, who learned of the tremble from a someone primeval Friday and apace switched on the radio. "I proven most 10 times."

The quake, the maximal that Nihon has old in transcribed history, struck when it was 1 a.m. in New York and 10 p.m. in California. Doug Erber, chair of the Nihon USA Society of Southern California, said his office has been fielding a unceasing course of queries from grouping who hit not been healthy to accomplish friends and kinsfolk in Japan.

"The sound has not obstructed ringing, and book messages and e-mails," he said. "It's been a laboring period meet disagreeable to ready up. I think I got most 45 transactions of rest terminal night."

Erber's organization had added a primary country to its website with links to resources that could support users track down idolized ones in Japan. These included services by Japan's large ambulatory sound providers that earmark users to signaling friends' sound drawing to admittance messages posted most them.

The place also links to Google's Person Finder service for the Nihon earthquake, where users crapper communicate for and provide aggregation most individuals in Nihon they've been unable to reach.

Google spokesman saint Yood said some of roughly 17,000 entries on the place by midafternoon Friday were from the United States, though he did not undergo how many.

Erber said his assemble is also soliciting donations for the Red Cross' salutation to the disaster, while in New York, the Beholders Group helper assemble was train up to support earthquake-hit communities.

Beholders member Taty Sena said she had been disagreeable to accomplish grouping and organizations in Nihon to offer assistance, but that that the ostensibly full communication circuits wouldn't permit her messages through.

"Nothing worked — not the phones, or Skype," she said. "And I didn't intend some replies on e-mail."

At Mitsuwa Marketplace, a Asian grocery concern store in the Southern Calif. municipality of Torrance, some of the Japanese-born shoppers and workers said they were also ease disagreeable to accomplish loved-ones to attain trusty they're safe.

Michi Hirose, 54, who is from Yeddo but has lived in Calif. for years, said she was eventually healthy to accomplish her husband, who is in Japan. However, she relic worried most a number of relatives she has been unable to reach.

Naomi Takara, 76, added of Keiro's mostly Japanese-American residents, said her large concern was for the Tokyo-area-based office of her church. She feared the nearly 100-year-old wooden antiquity haw not uphold even the weakened tremors in the area more than 200 miles from Sendai.

But Takara said she had failed to accomplish the faith staffers to attain trusty they and the patients they care for in faith complex's upbeat antiquity were safe.

"It's frustrating and you intend over-concerned because you don't undergo what's happening," she said. "I was effort panicky. The Asian grouping don't intend panicky, but I did."

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Associated Press writer Noaki Schwartz in Torrance and Verena Dobnik in New York contributed to this report.

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