USS Abatan, a 22,350-ton (full load displacement) Pasig class water distilling ship, was built at Sausalito, California, as a Maritime Commission T2-SE-A2 tanker. In the expectation that she would become a Navy oiler, she received the hull number AO-92 in July 1944, but was redesignated AW-4 about a month later and completed for water supply purposes. Abatan was commissioned in late January 1945 and soon went to the central Pacific. Beginning in March she was stationed at Ulithi Atoll, in the Caroline Islands, providing fresh water to the fleet during the final months of the war against Japan. In October 1945, after the end of hostilities, she moved westwards, initially to the Philippines, then to Okinawa and Shanghai, China, where she served between November 1945 and early May 1946. Her next assignment was at Eniwetok and Kwajalein, in the Marshall Islands, where she supported the Operation "Crossroads" nuclear weapons tests. In July and August 1946 Abatan steamed to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, via Pearl Harbor and the Panama Canal.

Decommissioned and placed in the Atlantic Reserve Fleet at Philadelphia in January 1947, Abatan was stricken from the Naval Vessel Register in July 1960 and transferred to the Maritime Administration. However, when deteriorating relations between Cuba and the United States resulted in the termination of fresh water supplies to the U.S. Naval Base at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, Abatan was reacquired by the Navy in late September 1962. She spent over a decade and a half at Guantanamo Bay, serving in non-commissioned status as a water storage and distilling vessel, with some of this work continuing even after she was again stricken from the Naval Vessel Register in May 1970. Abatan was finally disposed of, as a target, in early 1980.