University of Utah alumnus, poet missing in Japan

A search is underway on a small island in Japan where University of Utah alumnus and current University of Wyoming English professor Craig Arnold has gone missing.

Arnold was last seen Monday afternoon when he left the Watanabe Inn alone to research a nearby volcano on the island of Kuchino-erabusima. The award-winning poet is in the country participating in the U.S.-Japan Friendship Commission's Creative Artists Exchange Fellowship and is working on a book about volcanoes. His plan was to stay for one night on the island and leave the next day, according to an online statement.

The area in which police have found evidence Arnold hiked in but not out, is densely covered in vegetation and leads to the caldera of the volcano. Police and search dogs are scouring the island, along with some of its 160 inhabitants.

According to Marcia Dibble, of the U. Alumni Association, Japanese officials are only required by local law to search for three days, unless there is reason to believe the search should go on. So far, U.S. officials and Wyoming senators have succeeded in pushing the search to four days and beyond. Updates to the search and information on how to help are being posted online at findcraigarnold.blogspot.com, as well as a Facebook page created for the cause.

— Wendy Leonard