Student confirmed dead in terror attacks

Toshiya Kuge, a 20-year-old Waseda University student, has become the second Japanese to be officially confirmed dead in the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the United States, the Foreign Ministry said Sunday.

Kuge, from Tokyo, was on United Airlines Flight 93 that crashed near Pittsburgh, the ministry said. He left for the U.S. on Aug. 29 on a summer vacation and was to return Sept. 12, it said.

Twenty-two other Japanese are still missing.

U.S. authorities conducting postmortem examinations contacted the Japanese Consulate General in Detroit on Saturday morning with the confirmation that Kuge's body had been identified, the ministry said.

Kuge's family had provided U.S. authorities with genetic data, the ministry said.

NEW YORK (Kyodo) About 250 Japanese and Americans gathered at a church Saturday to mourn the death of Keiichiro Takahashi, a 53-year-old vice president of U.S. financial trading firm Euro Brokers who was killed in the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center last month.

On Sept. 28, Takahashi became the first Japanese national confirmed dead in the Sept. 11 suicide attacks in the U.S. that left some 6,000 people dead or missing. Twenty-three other Japanese are still unaccounted for.

A Japanese pastor speaking in Japanese and English urged the mourners not to despair, saying, "That would mean yielding to terrorism."

The church is located near Takahashi's home outside New York City. He lived with his wife, a son and a daughter.