The Last Days of the United States Asiatic Fleet: The Fates of the Ships and Those Aboard, December 8, 1941-February 5, 1942

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After Pearl Harbor, the American sailors of the fabled Asiatic Fleet were abandoned by Washington and left to conduct a war solely on their own, isolated from the rest of the fleet, while Congress discussed the hiring of 600 sports coordinators President Roosevelt thought were necessary for the prosecution of the war, despite his early efforts to wake up a pacifist nation and Congress. For sailors in the Philippines and the Netherlands East Indies there was no hope of seeing waves of battleships, aircraft carriers, heavy cruisers, submarines, and B-17s come over the horizon to save the day. Their fate was death aboard a burning, exploding ship, being executed upon being captured, or spending three and a half years as a prisoner, trying to avoid being murdered or dying of starvation or disease. Soldiers, sailors, and Marines were abandoned because of the failure of Washington to maintain a strong, well-prepared Navy in the face of Imperial Japanese and Nazi Germany aggression. Many books have been written about the ships of the Asiatic Fleet but this is the first book that looks behind the scenes through the writings of war correspondents and concentrates on the sailors who were on the ships.