Vietnamese-American one of seven sailors killed in US Navy collision off Japan

A Vietnamese American man was one of the seven sailors who died in a collision between the USS Fitzgerald and a Philippine-flagged container ship off the coast of Japan on Saturday, the U.S. Navy has announced.

He has been named as Ngoc T. Truong Huynh, 25, a sonar technician from Connecticut, Reuters reported.

Sonar Technician Ngoc T Truong Huynh, one of the dead sailors identified by the U.S. Navy following a collision between the USS Fitzgerald and a Philippine-flagged merchant vessel. Photo courtesy of U.S. Navy/Handout via Reuters

The USS Fitzgerald and a Philippine-flagged container ship collided south of Tokyo Bay early on Saturday.

Most of the crew were asleep when water started gushing in from a gash under the destroyer's waterline, flooding two cabins, the radio room and the auxiliary machine room.

A large dent was evident in the ship's starboard mid-section as it limped back to the Yokosuka naval base south of Tokyo on Saturday evening, said the report.

The damaged guided-missile destroyer at the U.S. naval base in Yokosuka, Japan. Photo courtesy of Kyodo News Agency/Handout via Reuters

The other six dead sailors have been named as Dakota Kyle Rigsby, 19, from Virginia; Shingo Alexander Douglass, 25, from California; Noe Hernandez, 26, from Texas; Carlos Victor Ganzon Sibayan, 23, from California; Xavier Alec Martin, 24, from Maryland; and Gary Leo Rehm Jr., 37, from  Ohio.

Multiple U.S. and Japanese investigations are underway to establish why such a large container ship could collide with the smaller warship in clear weather, according to Reuters.