The butcher’s bill for the campaign was especially high on ships long associated with the Asiatic Fleet:
Houston, Pope, Pillsbury, Peary, Perch, S-36, Edsall, Stewart, Asheville, Langley, and Pecos were lost. Upward of 1,800 Americans gave their lives.
The majority of these deaths occurred under Helfrich’s command, which troubled Hart, King, and others. Hart alluded to these casualties in his postwar “Supplementary Narrative,” comparing them to U.S. casualties at Tarawa, which (unlike the navy’s losses) had received extensive, and heartbreaking, press coverage. In this comparison Hart understood that the Java campaign’s travails were similar to those suffered later by the USMC at Tarawa.
Those losses marked the end of the Java campaign for the forces of the U.S. Navy.