A 34-year-old Navy lieutenant is currently serving a three-year term for manslaughter in a Japanese prison. Here is a Wall Street Journal editorial explaining how he got there:
Lt. Ridge Alkonis, assigned to the guided-missile destroyer the USS Benfold in Yokosuka, was driving his family back from a trip to Mt. Fuji in May 2021 when he fell unconscious. Two Japanese nationals died in the resulting wreck. No one alleges drugs or alcohol were involved. Lt. Alkonis is a Mormon and doesn’t drink, and his wife and young children were in the car in broad daylight. Jonathan Franks, a spokesman for the family, says a Navy neurologist said that Lt. Alkonis had suffered acute mountain sickness.
This is a standard Wall Street Journal editorial. Every sentence in it is true and it leaves you with a clear sense of outrage over Alkonis's treatment. Why would a Japanese judge hand down such a harsh sentence over something that was clearly a freak accident? More generally, should US service members be subject to the "whims of local justice"?
But the problem here isn't with what the Journal editorial said. The problem is what it left out:
- The three-judge panel in the case didn't believe Alkonis's claim of mountain sickness.
- Partly this was because of inconsistencies between his testimony and what he told the police during an earlier round of questioning.
- Partly it was because altitude sickness typically doesn't manifest below 8,000 feet and virtually never below 6,000 feet—and always while you're ascending. Alkonis was descending from, at most, around 7,000 feet, and the accident occurred in the Yamamiya district, which is around 1,000-2,000 feet.
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- And finally, it was partly because Alkonis passed out completely before losing control of his car. This is not normal behavior for altitude sickness.
- Instead, the court concluded that Alkonis fell asleep at the wheel and continued driving anyway. Then he fell asleep a second time and ended up killing two people.
This puts a different spin on things, doesn't it?
Please note: This post is not about taking sides on the Alkonis case nor about the fairness of his sentence. I wasn't there; I didn't attend the trial; and I'm not a doctor.
Rather, this post is an example of why you should never believe anything you read on the Wall Street Journal editorial page. If you're lucky, the words on the page will be tolerably correct. But lucky or not, the editorial will never, ever provide a complete and fairminded argument. That would put them out of business.
It used to be that the WSJ's editorial page was considered their version of everyone else's "cartoon section".
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Airplane cabins are usually pressurized to around the equivalent of 8000 ft. If that caused altitude sickness, thousands of people flying everyday would be passing out during flights. That doesn't happen. You need to be up around 12-14k feet before most people feel anything, if they're susceptible to AS at all.
I wonder how many foreign nationals are sitting in *our* jails and prisons at the "whim" of local law enforcement charged with vehicular manslaughter? Would the WSJ like to go to bat for any of them?
"I wonder how many foreign nationals are sitting in *our* jails and prisons at the "whim" of local law enforcement charged with vehicular manslaughter? "
It isn't just foreign nationals sitting in America's jails. It a whole lot of Americans. We have the highest incarceration rate on Earth - Japan's incarceration rate is less than 1/10 ours. And yet the WSJ made the weird decision to focus on one of the vanishingly few possibly questionable sentences *in Japan*. Bizarre.
US congress passed a law specifically to keep paying this guys salary while he rots in the Japanese jail. And it had lots of democrat support.
The WSJ editorial page is a Murdoch moving his stars around.
As the Simpsons fade, Grandpa is just yelling at clouds at a new venue.
To be fair, the WSJ editorial page had a well earned reputation for intellectual dishonesty decades before Murdoch bought it. Rupert is just keeping it alive and moulding it to his purpose.
Like +10. Sadly.
I remember reading a blog post by Josh Marshall where he said the intermal organizational politics of the WSJ editorial page are weird.
According to him, it has a completely siloed management and staff structure from the WSJ news division. Also, it has a totally antagonistic relationship with the regular WSJ journalists. It contradicts their reporting and has apparently exposed background sources in editorials.
So, yeah. It's just a propaganda arm attached to the paper.
Why would a Japanese judge hand down such a harsh sentence...
It's not a harsh sentence.
Wondering what the sentence should be here:
https://twitter.com/kenklippenstein/status/1612848872061128704?s=20&t=axjAJl0L0H0xqJZxIp7JFA
And for whom?
I thought the same thing. Getting 3 years for killing two people in an accident you caused, even if non-intentionally, doesn't strike me as a particularly harsh sentence.
And japanese criminal sentences are all around harsher than american. They take social order far more seriously than americans.
Kevin, can you link to your sources for the info WSJ left out? CNN & WaPo's articles more or less follow WSJ's line. How/where did you learn that he was at ~1000-2000 feet at the time of the accident, and that the court said he'd fallen asleep twice?
I found some articles that mentioned that it happened in a residential area of Yamamiya district. I imagine Kevin used google to determine the relative altitude when the accident happened. Haven't found anything saying that he fell asleep twice.
It would make them pick better battles.
"But the problem here isn't [accuracy]. The problem is what it left out..."
That's certainly true at the WSJ, where the ed page has long been known for its distortions. But I think it's true for nearly everything you read.
The algorithm behind journalism, even the best of it, is accuracy, not truth. Editorial decisions about what gets put in or edited out of a story, and which stories get published and which do not, and how news is played up or played down, have more impact on the public being properly informed than whether the details in a story are accurate.
OT
I like Katie Porter a lot. But I'd rather she continue to be Kevin's rep in the House than try to be my senator.
One observation about this that I would make in the context of American roads- and I will make clear I have no idea the situation in Japan- is that there are way too few areas to pull over and rest. On Interstates, there are some rest areas and truck stops, but states are closing their rest areas and truck stops, more and more, are prohibiting automobile drivers from parking and sleeping. On state and county highways, there are often no turnouts and no rest areas. And in urban and suburban areas, there are usually no rest areas or turnouts at all.
Obviously part of what's going on is a fear of crime and attempts to save maintenance costs. But I bet these policy choices kill a nonzero number of Americans. It should be possible to pull off a road and rest at night if a driver needs to, and state highway departments should make this possible.
The WSJ is just following Mike Lee who has been banging on about how hard done by Alkonis has been. Lee seems to be resolved to give the Okinawa Governor who wants the US base in his jurisdiction closed another argument for closure by suggesting top US pols have got the back of US troops who offend against the local population.
That base will be absolutely critical if Taiwan is to be defended. Maybe Lee is pro-China!!
"This puts a different spin on things, doesn't it?" No it doesn't. Recall the wife of the CIA agent who the US government spirited out of england after she killed someone in a head on collision (she was driving on the right side of the road whereas everyone else in england drives on the left side). The US government is now taking the position that none of its citizens should ever be held criminally accountable in a foreign court. Pretty sure I remember them fighting against the conviction of a navy sailor who was a child rapist in Okinawa years ago.