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Floor Speech

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Mr. LEE. Madam President, just last night, U.S. Navy LT Ridge Alkonis was forced to leave his wife and three children and report to a Japanese prison. An American serviceman had to explain to his children that although he had done absolutely nothing wrong, he had to leave them, and he had to leave them to be incarcerated in a prison on foreign soil for 3 whole years--a prison inside a land that he had been asked to serve in by his country, to protect that country. And now he is in prison in that country, having been ordered to prison by that country even though he had done nothing wrong.

While serving his country in Japan, Lieutenant Alkonis, a man who loves the country of Japan, who has spent years there, who had spent years there many years before the U.S. Navy had assigned him to serve in Japan--he served there for 2 years as a missionary. He learned the language. Both as a missionary and as a member of the U.S. Navy, he has continued his acts of community service in every community where he has lived and served. He is a model, an upstanding citizen in every respect. He is a decent, kind, intelligent, hard-working officer, and a loving husband and father.

It is while serving in Japan that he was involved in a car accident. It was a car accident that resulted from a tragic, unforeseeable, unforeseen medical emergency.

Now, that accident left two people dead. I speak sincerely when I say that my deepest sympathies go out to the victims of that accident, along with their families and their friends and their loved ones. I can't begin to imagine their sense of loss and confusion and hurt and even anger associated with the horrific accident.

It is important to note, however, that this was, in fact, an accident. In no way, shape, or form do the facts of the case suggest otherwise--quite to the contrary. All of the facts in evidence indicate that this is what happened, and yet the Japanese court continues to insist that Lieutenant Alkonis somehow had some culpability, that he did something wrong. They continue to float the false narrative that he fell asleep while driving as a result of his own carelessness or negligence. That simply is not true.

The accident occurred at 1 p.m. a little over a year ago--at 1 p.m. in broad daylight. Lieutenant Alkonis was well rested and had no reason to be tired or drowsy. In fact, he was having a conversation with his daughter when he passed out midsentence. He remained unconscious despite his daughter's repeated attempts to yell and scream and kick the seat. Alkonis did not wake in response to his daughter's cries, nor did he wake even upon impact when the accident occurred. No matter how deep a sleeper, anyone would be awakened by either of these events, but he didn't. He remained unconscious even after the collision.

It is important to note that eyewitnesses reported that Lieutenant Alkonis's color had drained from his face, which is precisely consistent with what would happen with someone who has suffered from a syncopal episode like this one. He was too weak to even open his car door after he finally regained consciousness in the wake of the accident.

It is simply disingenuous that Judge Kumiko Maesawa would offer such a simplistic view by stating that Alkonis should have pulled over if he felt drowsy. It flies in the face of the evidence and the experiences of everyone at the scene, including--and especially--his family, who were present at the time. The comments are even more egregious considering the fact that the Japanese authorities didn't even so much as bother to conduct a thorough investigation into the medical event following the crash. They appear to have been willfully inclined to disregard pretty clear indications of a medical emergency. Apparently, it wasn't what they wanted to find. So they didn't find it. So they didn't conduct the thorough investigation that needed to be conducted. He was even denied a medical evaluation before the Japanese police subjected him to 26 days of rigorous detention and custodial interrogation before he was so much as charged.

This is not how friends treat each other. This is not how one friendly nation treats another nation when one nation sends its best and its brightest and its bravest, including people like LT Ridge Alkonis, to go and fight to protect that country. That is not how we treat each other as nations.

The U.S. Navy did conduct an investigation, the same kind of investigation that should have been conducted by the Japanese authorities but the Japanese authorities didn't conduct. And in that investigation the U.S. Navy, very thorough in its approach, concluded that Lieutenant Alkonis, in fact, lost consciousness, and the loss of consciousness was attributed in that thorough investigation to something known as acute mountain sickness. There were no drugs in his system. There was no alcohol in his system. Nothing like that had anything to do with this crash. And yet, even after the Navy concluded that he was not at fault, Lieutenant Alkonis did everything within his power to remedy the situation, because being the brave, patriotic, decent, kind, loving American that he is, he was heartbroken over the fact that an accident had occurred that he was involved in and that two people had lost their lives.

You know, there is a tradition in the Japanese culture, a tradition that is in so many respects admirable. It is known as the ``gomenasai'' tradition. Under the ``gomenasai'' tradition, when something awful happens, there is an attempt made by those involved in an incident or resulting in loss. You go to the family, the loved ones of the deceased, and offer something to offset it. We may think of it in rough terms here as a crude approximation of restitution. It is not exactly that, but it is a significant, profound gesture of remorse of the fact that the incident happened at all. In fact, he paid over $1.5 million to the victims' families, more than what would ordinarily be considered customary within the ``gomenasai'' tradition.

He has expressed deep and sincere remorse, and despite all of this, despite all of his efforts through the ``gomenasai'' process, despite all of these mitigating circumstances, despite the deep remorse, and despite the noble, unblemished record of distinguished service to the U.S. Navy and to Japan, despite using every resource at his disposal to make things right, he is still in prison.

I find it nothing short of inexcusable that an American who experienced a medical emergency should be treated so poorly by an allied nation that he is protecting. Japanese nationals convicted of the same crime are routinely granted leniency. In fact, 95 percent of similarly charged defendants get a suspended sentence; meaning, even if they are charged, even if they are convicted, 95 percent of them don't actually have to do prison time because their sentence has been suspended.

Clearly, the Japanese judicial system is trying to make an example of Lieutenant Alkonis, perhaps stemming from a history of disputes over our status of forces agreement. But I will note here that those disputes have absolutely nothing to do with Lieutenant Alkonis. No, he is being targeted here because he is an American and because he was in the unfortunate position of having suffered a medical emergency that resulted in tragedy.

This is no way for a friendly nation to treat a friendly nation. These conversations are difficult because we have a great relationship with Japan. We have been allies for a long time. We have had a good relationship under our status of forces agreement. So these conversations are difficult, but not in spite of the fact that our Nations are friendly but because they are friendly, we need to have difficult conversations, just as sometimes it is only a friend who can approach a friend and speak the truth.

How, I would ask, can we possibly ensure justice for the thousands of American men and women who serve our country abroad when they face prejudice because of their status as Americans and as American servicemen and servicewomen?

Lieutenant Alkonis represents our best--our very best, the best of the best. If our servicemembers can't get fair treatment from the country they have been tasked to defend--especially those who, like Lieutenant Alkonis, represent the very best ideals of the U.S. Navy-- then maybe it is time to revisit key portions of our status of forces agreement with Japan. If their due process protections aren't sufficient to protect someone like Lieutenant Alkonis, to make sure that he has an adequate opportunity to build his case, to prepare to meet his accusers, to gather exculpatory evidence, then something is wrong with the status of forces agreement.

I am still not entirely convinced--not at all--that there weren't violations of the status of forces agreement. In fact, it appears that there were here. But to the extent the status of forces agreement is insufficient to deal with those, then we need to reopen that because this is too high a price to pay.

We are willing to make sure that there are consequences to people who disobey a law, who engage in bad behavior on foreign land. But to have a situation like this one, where someone through no fault of his own, just as a result of a tragic medical emergency of which he had no prior warning whatsoever, to have him sent to prison for 3 years bereft of his friends, his family, his career that he so deeply loved, his children, to whom he is everything--this is wrong. We deserve better than this from an allied nation, especially a nation with which we have such a generally good relationship, as we do with Japan. And so I sincerely hope and pray that Ambassador Emanuel, Secretary Blinken, and the Department of Defense will immediately take every step possible to negotiate with their Japanese counterparts and bring Ridge home.

I call upon the President of the United States to intervene directly with his counterpart and bring Ridge home. I call upon all sympathetic ears within the sound of my voice to plead not only with decision makers in Japan but with almighty God to bring Ridge home. We need that to happen. It is not just about Ridge Alkonis and his family. It is about the security and confidence needed by every service family in the American Armed Forces. Deployed whether in Japan or anywhere else, they need to know that we have their backs. They need to know that while they are in the service of the United States of America, we will watch out for them; that when a foreign country makes a tragic mistake, as they have done here, we will continue to advocate for them until we bring them home.

I call on my colleagues to join me in the effort to bring Ridge home.

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