When the catastrophic earthquake of March 11, 2011, struck the Tohoku region, Makoto Yanagisawa was researching stem cells at a university laboratory in the United States.
"I was thinking of returning (to Japan) someday, but decided to do so sooner after I kept seeing TV footage showing huge piles of debris (in Tohoku)," the 39-year-old Yanagisawa said.
A native of Tokyo, he gave up his research, on which he had spent eight years, to move from Georgia to Iwate Prefecture, first as a volunteer interpreter.