U.S. team concludes island search for missing poet

CHEYENNE, Wyo. — An American rescue team had no luck on its final day of searching for a Wyoming poet missing on a remote Japanese island, but a Japanese team will continue working, a rescuer said Friday.

Craig Arnold, a University of Wyoming assistant professor of English, vanished April 26. He was in Japan as part of a creative writing program and was hiking on a volcano on the island of Kuchinoerabu-jima, which is about 30 miles off Japan's southern Kyushu island.

David Kovar, of the California-based 1st Special Response Group, said Friday that four members of his team followed Arnold's tracks over the top of the volcano to an extremely steep area of the island.

The team must leave the island to meet other commitments, he said, but the Japanese government has committed a technical climbing team to continue to search the area the American team identified.

Earlier, Kovar had said the team had dramatically reduced the size of the search area and expressed hope that progress would be made.

"We know where he last was and the direction of travel," Kovar said. "It gives us a great deal of confidence that something should be resolved today — or if not today, then local resources can continue to work it."

Arnold, 41, is the author of two award-winning books of poetry. He was in Japan through the U.S.-Japan Friendship Commission's Creative Artists Exchange Fellowship and was working on a book on volcanoes.