TOKYO — U.S. and Japanese forces joined in air-and-sea search missions Saturday for seven American sailors missing after their Navy destroyer and a much-larger container ship collided off the coast of Japan.
The damaged USS Fitzgerald reached its home port at Yokosuka Naval Base, south of Tokyo, after emergency efforts at sea to control flooding.
The operators of the merchant ship, ACX Crystal, reported all of the 20-member Filipino crew were safe.
Civilian and military investigators, meanwhile, began trying to piece together the cause of the nighttime collision.
The Philippine-flagged Crystal is nearly four times as large as the Fitzgerald, an Aegis guided-missile destroyer. Japanese and U.S. vessels and aircraft fanned out across the scene of the collision, about 12 miles off Japan’s Izu peninsula. The Japanese coast guard led the search teams.
Source: Washington Post
