Archives West Finding Aid

Albert Henry Van Arsdale was born 1910 in Seattle, where he attended Garfield High School. He worked as a fisherman and deckhand before serving in the U.S. Army at Fort Mills on Corregidor, Philippine Islands in 1934-1935. In 1936 he was a crew member/dresser aboard the schooner Wawana fishing in the Bering Sea, and continued fishing in Alaska through 1939. His subsequent travels included China and Japan, and he drove trucks [transported goods?} on the Burma Rd from Rangoon to China between 1940 and 1941.

In late 1941 he joined the Johore Volunteer Engineers as a combat engineer in the British Malaysian Army. He was wounded in the Battle for Singapore in 1942, then escaped from Singapore on the night of February 15, 1942 with others of the JVE and Kedah Volunteer Force on the Fisheries Dept. small refrigeration vessel MV Kembong . He reached Sumatra and Padang, then took the HMS Danae to Java, then the Wu Chang to Ceylon. In India, he attended the Officer Cadets Training Unit in Belgaum with other JVE/KVF escapees. He was 2nd Lieutenant in the 1st British South Staffordshire Regiment, part of the 77th Indian Infantry Brigade, and participated in the first Chindit operation, "Longcloth" (also known as "Loincloth".

Arsdale relinquished his British Army commission on September 25, 1943 and enlisted in US Army as a Private on September 26, 1943. He was promoted to Sergeant after joining OSS Detachment 101, where he was deployed on the Ledo Road in Burma. He raised a platoon of 100 Chinese, part of a Chinese Company. He demobilized in October 1945, and returned to the US Merchant Navy aftter the war.

In the 1960s, then Captain Albert van Arsdale purchased a surplus 110 ft submarine chaser and converted it in Seattle into a coastal freighter. He died February 17, 1986 in Union, Mason County near Seattle. Biography information submitted by Jonathan Moffatt, 2023.