Article snippet: YOKOSUKA, Japan — The cluster of bars in the streets known as “The Honch” a few blocks from the United States naval base here pulsed with the primal energy of young men and women letting off steam on a hot summer night. It was Thursday, when the Seventh Fleet, which has its home port here about 40 miles south of Tokyo, announced the death of one sailor and said it had given up the search for nine others who had been missing since a collision between the destroyer John S. McCain and an oil tanker near Singapore on Monday. The news, coming two months after the Seventh Fleet suffered another collision between a destroyer and a cargo ship that left seven crew members dead, was a painful counterpoint to the spirited shouting over pounding hip-hop music at Club 54 or the games of darts lubricated with 20-ounce mugs of beer at Alex’s Saloon down the street. “It is kind of nerve-racking, the amount of deaths that are happening,” said Zereon Martinez, 23, an enlisted airman from San Antonio who serves on the aircraft carrier Ronald Reagan, as he walked to a restaurant for dinner with his girlfriend, Hayley Robbins, 23, also a crew member on the carrier. “The Navy is supposed to be one of the safest branches, in a sense,” Mr. Martinez said, “especially when we are not in a time of war. It is not something that you expect.” These are tense times for the men and women of Yokosuka, with crews on alert, given increasing threats in the region from North Korea’s ballistic missil... Link to the full article to read more
At Yokosuka, 7th Fleet’s Home Port, Worrying and Wondering, ‘Why?’ - The New York Times
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