Seven students from the University of Minnesota studying in the Tokyo area of Japan have been told to return to the United States, a university spokesman said Sunday.

Four of them are already back in this country, and three others are working on travel arrangements to return, said Dan Wolter.

However, four other students who were studying to the south and west of Tokyo in Nagoya and Hiroshima will stay in Japan. "They were given an option of evacuation, and all of them opted to stay," Wolter said. "It was decided those students were safe where they are, and it was not necessary to bring them home."

He said that the university's international travel risk assessment and advisory committee recommended that the seven students be evacuated.

Part of the reason for the students leaving was that the U.S. Department of State has issued a travel advisory warning about travel to Japan, Wolter said. The country is suffering the aftermath of the earthquake, tsunami and major radiation leakage from the damaged reactors at the Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power Station, about 170 miles north of Tokyo.

But Wolter said one of the central reasons the seven students were being called home is that Tokyo University, where they had been studying, has closed, and there is intermittent electricity service and transportation disruptions.

University of Minnesota students carry insurance as part of the normal costs they pay for studying abroad. "This has been approved as a natural disaster, [so] all the costs [of their travel back to the United States] are borne by the insurance company," Wolter said.

Students from the University of Minnesota who were in Egypt earlier this year were also recalled by the university, he said.

Randy Furst • 612-673-7382