Top US Navy chief in Japan over destroyer collision

TOKYO: The US Navy’s top commander visited Japan on Tuesday to meet the grieving families of seven sailors killed in a weekend accident, as investigators probe questions over the timing of the collision with a container ship.

Admiral John Richardson arrived at the US naval base in Yokosuka on the outskirts of Tokyo to meet bereaved relatives and officers who served on the USS Fitzgerald.

“It’s an intimate meeting, very solemn grieving with families, so we’re not even taking photos,” Commander Ron Flanders, press officer at the US Naval Forces in Japan, said.

The sailors, aged 19 to 37, were found in flooded sleeping berths a day after the collision tore a huge gash in the side of their guided-missile destroyer.

Their bodies were being flown back to the US on Tuesday morning, according to the Commander US Naval Forces Japan. “Fitzgerald 7 are headed home; just left Japan...#FITZ crew, family on hand to say goodbye,” it said on Twitter.

Japanese coastguard investigators have been interviewing the Filipino crew of the cargo ship ACX Crystal, and hope to directly hear accounts of sailors aboard the much-smaller US destroyer.

The cargo ship’s crew — who were not injured — apparently took nearly an hour to report the collision in a busy shipping channel near the warship’s home base, a gateway to container ports in Tokyo and nearby Yokohama.

Originally, Japan’s coastguard said the crash happened at 2:20 am on Saturday based on when it was reported by the Crystal’s crew.