So I was waiting to see if this would appear in any of the Japanese news sources I frequently monitor, and just as I figured, it didn’t. It’s a shame that a few problem Sailors are able to make such a negative impact on our image here in Japan, and can dominate the news for weeks. Yet when one of our Sailors does something that shows just what kind of great men and women we really are, it doesn’t even get a mention.
SN Phillip Simmons, a Sailor on board the USS Kitty Hawk, recently risked his own life by jumping onto the tracks of an oncoming train to help a sick Japanese man who had fallen off the platform. From the Stars & Stripes story:
YOKOSUKA NAVAL BASE, Japan — A USS Kitty Hawk sailor was recognized this week for jumping onto train tracks to rescue a Japanese man who was having a seizure.
Seaman Phillip Simmons was waiting for his train at Yokosuka’s Kenritsu Daigaku station April 8 when he saw a Japanese man start shaking, according to a Navy release.
The man fell off the platform and onto the tracks below, Simmons said in the release.
“I saw him start shaking, and start to lose his balance,” Simmons is quoted as saying in the release. “Another Japanese man tried to catch him, but he fell over into the tracks, so I jumped down to him and tried to get him up.”
Simmons pulled the man to safety with help from other people at the station, the release said. The volunteers then pulled Simmons off the tracks just seconds before the train arrived, he said.
“I could see the train coming and just kept thinking, ‘Oh [no], I need to get back up,’” Simmons said in the release.
I know everyone thinks I’m Mr. Negative, but I was really happy to read this story. It really shows the lengths Sailors will go to, sometimes even putting their own lives at risk, in order to keep others safe. Good stuff.
Comments 8
Good for you, Philip Simmons and thanks for posting this story Jim.
This isn’t the first time someone associated with the USS Kitty Hawk has saved someone’s life off base and hasn’t received local Japanese media attention for it. In fact, this very same thing has happened before. Were you around when the Kitty Hawk pulled into Guam and the sailor saved the drowning/unconscious Japanese kid at the hotel swimming pool? That one wasn’t in the news either.
Posted 19 Apr 2008 at 2:32 pm ¶Jim, nice to see you posting this story. What that young Sailor did was great and any other Sailor standing there would have done the same thing. It is that .001% that are NOT doing the right thing and giving the other 99.999% a bad name. Come on, you knew the Japanese press would not pick up on this…. I would bet my pay check that there were no less than 10 other Japanese standing there that didn’t do a thing to help. Not to steal a networks tag line, but you do keep your blog “Fair and Balanced” Keep it up!
Posted 19 Apr 2008 at 3:09 pm ¶Yeah, right on Jim. This kind of story isn’t newsworthy enough I guess. Save one, stab one, the stabbing wins out. I am honestly proud of this guy. I wonder how many people would have just shown depraved indifference and let him die.
Posted 19 Apr 2008 at 5:43 pm ¶I am so glad to see an article about us doing right instead of us always getting portrayed in a poor light. I figures that this is not in the Japanese media outlets though.
Posted 20 Apr 2008 at 12:48 am ¶God damn I’m proud of this guy. I would have done the same thing, as I’m sure most of the sailors stationed there would. But whats really sad about the whole thing is what you mentioned earlier. This story didn’t even see the break of daylight in Japanese media, which is a crying shame to millions of Japanese. They ought to know that despite what few individuals do does not constitute the entirety of US forces in Japan. But in closing, all I gotta say is:
Xenophobia… gotta love it.
Posted 21 Apr 2008 at 6:06 pm ¶Personally, I think the sailor was foolish. It’s nice that the guy lived and all, but if the guy had died on the platform after getting pulled off the tracks, the sailor would have been open to a huge lawsuit. Remember this the next time you see a Japanese guy choking on his otoro: THERE IS NO GOOD SAMARITAN LAW IN THIS COUNTRY!
Posted 29 Apr 2008 at 2:27 am ¶He did the right thing. Not all of us think litigiously when we see another human being’s life at stake. It was a quick and smart response. Are you saying he should have watched the guy get turned into ground meat instead of saving him?
Posted 29 Apr 2008 at 4:22 am ¶If I see a guy choking on his sushi, Japanese OR American- I will do something. It’s the humane thing to do.
I think he recieved an award from the GOJ.
On a more humorous note, I was at good ol’ Yokosuka Chuo with a buddy of mine to catch a train to go way way way out in country ass Tokyo-ken (prefecture) for a party that his girlfirend was throwing, we noticed an older Japanese man stagger out to just right behind the “abunai” yellow strip. There was nothing particular about this guy, just your typical drunk old Japanese man who enjoyed too many cheap bottles of the rot-gut shochyu you can buy in the plastic 4L bottles. We don’t pay too much attention to this staggering man reeking of cheap Japanese liquor until he procedes to reach down, unzip his fly, whip it out and starts pissing in the tracks.
We sit there stunned, unsure if we were having a shared hallucination, but there he was, one hand steering the flow and the other hanging to the side. Pissing away without a care in the world. All of the Japanese people on the platform pulled the “do-do-do we don’t see the one embarassing Japanese or dirty or homeless Japanese person doing something inappropriate” avoiding making any type of eye contact; starting at the ceiling, looking elsewhere, staring at thier feet or punching away on thier keitai.
Except one old woman.
It was an old Japanese woman on the opposite platform for the train heading towards Mirua who stood, pointed and laughed at the drunk man urinating in the tracks.
Posted 22 May 2008 at 9:09 pm ¶Post a Comment
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