The captain of the tugboat made an emergency call around 5:45 a.m., the local fire department said, adding of the four people recovered from the pleasure boat, two men and a woman had died, and the remaining person had suffered minor injuries, Kyodo News reported.
The pleasure boat sank after colliding with the 16-meter-long, 19-ton tugboat off Yamaguchi Prefecture, which had been issued with a dense fog advisory for inland areas on Sunday morning.
MA/PR