TOKYO, Japan (Reuters) – Japanese Chief Cabinet Suga Yoshihide on Monday (June 19) offered condolences to seven sailors found dead in flooded compartments of the USS Fitzgerald, which collided with a container ship off Japan on Saturday (June 17).
A significant portion of the crew was asleep when the collision occurred, tearing a gash under the warship’s waterline and flooding two berthing compartments, the radio room and the auxiliary machine room.
The U.S. Navy on Monday officially confirmed the identity of the seven dead sailors as: Dakota Kyle Rigsby, 19, from Palmyra, Virginia; Shingo Alexander Douglass, 25, from San Diego, California; Ngoc T Truong Huynh, 25, from Oakville, Connecticut; Noe Hernandez, 26, from Weslaco, Texas; Carlos Victor Ganzon Sibayan, 23, from Chula Vista, California; Xavier Alec Martin, 24, from Halethorpe, Maryland; and Gary Leo Rehm Jr., 37, from Elyria, Ohio.
Two of three injured crew members who were evacuated from the ship by helicopter, including the ship’s commanding officer, Commander Bryce Benson, were released from the U.S. Naval Hospital in Yokosuka, the U.S. Navy’s Seventh Fleet said on its Facebook page on Monday. The last sailor remained in hospital and no details were given about his condition.
