The USS English (DD-696) was an Allen M. Sumner-class destroyer laid down on October 19, 1943, as DD-696 and launched on February 27, the following year. It was commissioned on May 14, 1944, under Commander James Thomas Smith’s command and served in the US Navy for 26 years until it was decommissioned on May 15, 1970. During its activity, the ship carried a complement of 336 people on board and had its main missions in Iwo Jima, Okinawa, Pearl Harbor, Formosa, and Ulithi. After the decommissioning, the ship was struck from the Naval Register and sold to Taiwan on August 11, 1970, where it was renamed ROCS Huei Yang. The navy officially stopped using asbestos in the mid-1970s, after the knowledge of asbestos’ danger became widespread, but the damage had already been done - thousands of Navy personnel had already been exposed to the hazardous material. Like other ships of her time, the USS English (DD-696) was built with asbestos-containing materials. One could have possibly been exposed to asbestos, either by being a part of the crew serving in the Navy, but also by being implicated in the process of building or dismantling ships, both processes involved the release of asbestos fibers into the air.
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