A spring semester program for University of Notre Dame students in Tokyo, Japan has been canceled by Notre Dame’s Office of International Studies due to the situation following that country’s March 11 earthquake and tsunami and its subsequent nuclear crisis.
The three students enrolled in the canceled program had been scheduled to leave for Japan March 27.
“Given the current and future uncertainty in Japan, the University has decided to cancel the spring semester abroad program,” the students were told in a letter from the office. “We understand that our students have prepared long and hard for the semester abroad and this may come as a huge disappointment to them, and to us as well, but their safety and personal well-being are our top priorities.”
Notre Dame’s other program in Japan operates in conjunction with the Center for Japanese Studies at Nanzan University in Nagoya, which is some 250 miles southwest of Sendai, the coastal city nearest to the earthquake’s epicenter and the Daiichi Nuclear Power Plant in Fukushima. The two Notre Dame students currently enrolled in this program since mid-January are safe and in frequent contact by email and telephone with Notre Dame’s international studies staff.