Japanese citizens will join an arduous search for a missing American who vanished in a mountainous forest
By Hanako Montgomery, Holly Yan, CNN
(CNN) — One stranger from Tokyo is shutting down his business for a week to help. Another volunteer dropped everything to provide transportation and translations for American parents desperate to find their son.
The weeklong quest to find James “Weston” Higginbotham has yielded no signs of the 20-year-old. Now, with the permission of Japanese police, the student’s family has made a public plea for any experienced hikers to aid in the search through treacherous terrain. That search will begin Saturday.
“The people have been incredible,” said Weston’s mother, Nancy Higginbotham.
Weston, an Auburn University student in Japan with his family to celebrate his brother’s high school graduation, disappeared May 29 after an argument with his mother. He went off on his own, and the location app on his phone was turned off.
He was last seen on CCTV footage walking alone near the border between Kyoto and Shiga prefectures – on a path that led to a hiking trail in the nearby woods.
Local police have scoured the area, which includes the heavily forested Higashiyama mountain range. After a typhoon pummeled the area this week, officers returned from the search zone covered waist-deep in mud, Weston’s father Keith Higginbotham told CNN on Friday.
“There were over 100 police officers there over the past 72 hours, including canines and helicopters, and they did not find anything,” Nancy said.
Eventually, police had to scale back resources from the search, Nancy said.
So “I went to the Shiga police station to ask if I could coordinate a search-and-rescue event with the citizens, because you do have to ask for permission,” she said.
“We were having communication issues. So I looked at my WhatsApp, I searched for the last person who said they would translate for me. And within 30 minutes, they were at the Shiga police station translating for me, and then drove me to the Kyoto prefecture, and then drove me back to my Airbnb.”
The outpouring of support in Japan has been overwhelming – both in person and online.
A verified GoFundMe account supporting search efforts has garnered more than $40,000, including $25,000 from an anonymous donor.
“We are going to hire our own search-and-rescue (team) to help us, as well as ask for help from the Kyoto citizens,” Nancy said.
“We have posted things on Reddit and on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and we have a good group of people that are willing to help us.”
She’s especially touched by volunteers who have offered to dredge through the rugged, mountainous environment this weekend.
But the couple stressed they “definitely want to make sure everybody’s cautious, everybody’s got a partner they’re walking with.”
“If anybody’s coming out there, be prepared for it to be rough terrain. And if it’s too rough, you don’t have to. (You can) walk the neighborhood” with flyers, Keith said.
“We don’t want anybody to be in danger.”
One man who saw the family’s public plea from hundreds of miles away will travel to join the search.
“He is in Tokyo and is closing his business down for one week to come help us,” Nancy said.
“He wanted to do this because when he was in the United States, he had so many people helping him, and this is him paying it forward. And it just gave me chills. So I’m so grateful for any help we can get.”
CNN’s Jessie Yeung and Isabel Rosales contributed to this report.
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