{"id":36377,"date":"2026-06-06T16:38:06","date_gmt":"2026-06-06T16:38:06","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/36377\/"},"modified":"2026-06-06T16:38:06","modified_gmt":"2026-06-06T16:38:06","slug":"missing-auburn-university-student-found-dead-in-japan","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/36377\/","title":{"rendered":"Missing Auburn University student found dead in Japan"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"text | article-text\">KYOTO, Japan (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.waff.com\" title=\"\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">WAFF<\/a>) &#8211; An Auburn University student who was reported missing while on vacation in Japan with his family was found dead.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Family confirmed in a <a href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/share\/p\/18j6DZiX9y\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/share\/p\/18j6DZiX9y\/\">Facebook post<\/a> on Saturday that 20-year-old James \u201cWeston\u201d Higginbotham was found dead by a volunteer search-and-rescue group in a mountainous area outside of Kyoto.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">\u201cThe grief we feel is impossible to put into words,\u201d his mother, Nancy Higginbotham, shared.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Higginbotham\u2019s family said he went <a href=\"https:\/\/www.waff.com\/2026\/06\/03\/auburn-university-student-reported-missing-while-vacation-with-family-japan\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.waff.com\/2026\/06\/03\/auburn-university-student-reported-missing-while-vacation-with-family-japan\/\">to explore on his own on May 29, and there was no sign of him after that.<\/a><\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Police believed he went to explore local hiking trails and turned off his GPS.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Massive search teams looked for him throughout the week. <\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Nancy Higginbotham said the family traveled to Japan to celebrate one of their children getting straight A\u2019s throughout high school.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">The 20-year-old\u2019s mother said the family is grateful for the time they had with Weston but cannot begin to understand what life without him will be like.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">The Higginbotham family thanked everyone for their help and support.<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\">Below is Nancy Higginbotham\u2019s full statement on his death:<\/p>\n<p class=\"text | article-text\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/@waff48news\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/@waff48news\">Click Here to Subscribe on YouTube:<\/a> Watch the latest WAFF 48 news, sports &amp; weather videos on our YouTube channel!<\/p>\n<p>Copyright 2026 WAFF. All rights reserved.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"KYOTO, Japan (WAFF) &#8211; An Auburn University student who was reported missing while on vacation in Japan with&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":36378,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[27154,26397,8,151,13862,27017,14044,25987,26061],"class_list":["post-36377","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-kyoto","tag-auburn","tag-auburn-university","tag-japan","tag-kyoto","tag-missing","tag-missing-auburn-student","tag-missing-person","tag-nancy-higginbotham","tag-weston-higginbotham"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36377","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=36377"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/36377\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/36378"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=36377"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=36377"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=36377"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}