Five students at Fukushima University are volunteering in Houston in the wake of the devastation wrought by Hurricane Harvey.
The students happened to be in the disaster area as participants of an internship program at the Houston city office. They are helping with the operations of shelters and cleanup efforts clearing out disaster debris, reciprocating the gratitude they felt for the kindness of Americans in the wake of the March 2011 earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disasters.
The five are: Natsuki Igarashi, 20, a native of Nasushiobara, Tochigi Prefecture; Yuki Sato, 19, from the city of Koriyama; Yuki Tanpo, 19, a native of Utsunomiya, Tochigi Prefecture; Aya Watanabe, 20, originally from Murakami, Niigata Prefecture; and Kin Shiryu, a 29-year-old graduate student originally from Beijing.