A Marine tactical vehicle rolled over during training in Japan on Thursday, sending multiple Marines to the hospital with non-life-threatening injuries.
The joint light tactical vehicle experienced the mishap at approximately 9 a.m. local time Thursday at the Jungle Warfare Training Center in northern Okinawa, Japan, 2nd Lt. Owen Hitchcock told Marine Corps Times on Friday.
A Marine spokesman told Stars and Stripes, which first reported the incident, that eight to 10 Marines had been in the vehicle.
“The Marines are responsive and are being well taken care of by the medical professionals at [U.S. Naval Hospital Okinawa],” III Marine Expeditionary Force, the Japan-based force of which the Marines are a part, said in a Friday statement to Marine Corps Times.
The Marine Corps is investigating the cause of the rollover, III Marine Expeditionary Force said.
The Marine Corps will share more details when they are available, Hitchcock said.
An alert from U.S. Naval Hospital Okinawa about the emergency led to some confusion, because it just so happened that the hospital had been planning a mass-casualty response training for Thursday.
“You may see simulated injuries and role play that looks like serious injuries,” the hospital warned on Facebook on Wednesday.
On Thursday, the hospital posted on Facebook that it was experiencing “a real world mass casualty event” and warned people to avoid the emergency department unless they were dealing with emergencies of their own.
After confusion unfolded in the comments section of the post, the hospital clarified in a comment that the exercise had been canceled and the emergency was real.
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Rollovers of tactical vehicles can be deadly. Most recently, in December 2023, a Marine was killed when an amphibious combat vehicle rolled over during training on land in California.
Between 2010 and 2019, 3,753 noncombat tactical vehicle mishaps took place in the Army and Marine Corps, killing a total of 123 service members, according to a 2021 Government Accountability Office report.
Michael McDowell, the father of a Marine who was killed in a May 2019 rollover, successfully lobbied for a pilot program in which the Marine Corps and Army install data recorders, often known as black boxes, on tactical vehicles to gather better information on safety.
Irene Loewenson is a staff reporter for Marine Corps Times. She joined Military Times as an editorial fellow in August 2022. She is a graduate of Williams College, where she was the editor-in-chief of the student newspaper.
