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.
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 walloped the area this week, officers returned from the search zone covered waist-deep in mud, Weston’s father Keith Higginbotham told CNN on Friday.
Eventually, police had to scale back resources from the search, Weston’s mother 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.
“The people have been incredible,” Nancy Higginbotham said.
She’s especially touched by volunteers who have offered to help in a search through challenging terrain scheduled for this weekend.
One man “saw our cry for help to have people come tomorrow to search the woods. And he is in Tokyo and is closing his business down for one week to come help us,” Nancy Higginbotham said Friday.
“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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