A baby girl who had been asleep when an earthquake struck Japan was pulled out unscathed from the rubble of a destroyed home Friday after a six-hour rescue effort — just 24 hours before an even more powerful quake slammed the country.

The joyous moment was captured on TV as the 8-month-old girl was removed from the collapsed house in the devastated town of Mashiki.

She was on the first floor when the 6.5-magnitude quake rocked the region Thursday night as her mom, grandparents and 4-year-old brother were in the kitchen and living room, NBC News reported.

Fallen crossbeams from the roof created a pocket of protection around the lucky infant, whose mother couldn’t reach her amid the destruction. A team of about 50 people dug through the debris to reach the baby.

At least nine people — five women and four men — were killed and about 1,000 injured by the earthquake, which displaced about 44,000 people. The dead included a man in his 20s. The rest ranged from their 50s to one woman in her 90s. Eight of the nine victims were from Mashiki.

About 1,600 soldiers were deployed to help with the rescue and cleanup efforts as about 44,000 people sought refuge, The Telegraph reported.

About 24 hours later, the 7.1-magnitude quake slammed the same region early Saturday.

“Thursday’s quake might have been a foreshock of this one,” Shinji Toda of Tohoku University told national broadcaster NHK.

Several aftershocks rattled the region after the second quake, including one of 5.8 magnitude.

It was not immediately clear whether the latest quake increased the death toll as Japanese broadcaster NHK said calls were coming in from residents reporting people trapped inside houses and buildings.

Hisako Ogata, 61, evacuated to a nearby park in the hard-hit prefecture of Kumamoto with her daughter, where some 50 other people sat on blue plastic sheets.

“We left my house as we could not stay due to continuous jolts,” Ogata told AFP.

The Nuclear Regulation Authority said no abnormalities were found at the Sendai nuclear plant, where the only two of Japan’s 43 operable reactors are online.

The epicenter of the second quake was about 8 miles northwest of Thursday’s, and at a depth of about 6 miles, it was shallower — hitting residents still in shock from the previous night’s horrors.

Riho Tajima, an official at the Kumamoto disaster management office, said it had received unconfirmed information indicating one person was feared dead due to the collapse of a house.

“We are still in a tense situation as aftershocks are still rocking us continuously,” she said.

With Post wires