Gutsy WWII Asiatic Fleet Is Honored at Last

WASHINGTON —  Survivors of the Asiatic Fleet thrust to the front lines of World War II after the bombing of Pearl Harbor gathered Friday on the sunny plaza of the U.S. Navy Memorial to remember fallen comrades and celebrate the opening of a room for the fleet in the adjacent Navy Heritage Center.

“Outnumbered, outgunned, out-everything, we fought like hell,” recalled Charles Ankerberg, 75. “We’ve been waiting 55 years for recognition.”

Based at Manila Bay in the Philippines when America joined the war, the fleet of aging ships with obsolete equipment and inadequate supplies battled the Japanese in the western Pacific for three months, outnumbered 10 to 1, in a combined force with Australian, Dutch and British allies.

The cost to the Americans: 22 ships, 1,826 men killed and 519 taken prisoner, many of whom did not survive Japanese labor camps.

John Bracken, 85, of Philadelphia, a retired captain who served as signal officer on one of the fleet’s cruisers, donated $25,000 to create the memorial.

“We gave ‘em everything we had,” said Al Haas, 75, of Virginia Beach, Va. He spent 3 1/2 years in forced labor for the Japanese. “Everybody I ask, they never heard of us.”