Just apt that Fil-Am in command of US Navy ship

Having a Filipino-American in command of America’s best ship is especially appropriate because when this ship was nearly new, it evacuated survivors of the Mount Pinatubo eruption, an operation called Fiery Vigil. USS Abraham Lincoln also assisted Southeast Asians after a tsunami struck Sumatra, Indonesia.

I met sailors from the ship at a memorial-demonstration called Arlington West in Santa Barbara and spoke with them. They told me they were very proud of what they did in Indonesia where life-saving supplies were airlifted to Banda Aceh. The ship had been in the Persian Gulf but nobody wanted to talk about the air strikes they had launched there; they were proud they had helped people.

I am a veteran of the US Navy and, along with several Filipino nationals who were on our ship, served on a destroyer in the Tonkin Gulf. They were stewards and took care of my two friends’ bodies when they were killed by North Vietnamese rockets. Since retiring from the US Postal Service, I have been in the Philippines working as a missionary to try to help Filipinos.

I now live in Davao City, Mindanao.

—ROWLAND LANE ANDERSON,

Hotel Imperial Apartments, Davao City