USS Arikara (ATF-98) - Korean War Service

Korean War Service

In January 1950, the tug resumed occupation duty upon her arrival at Yokosuka and, for the next five months, provided towing and salvage services in Japan. However, on 25 June 1950, North Korean forces surged south across the 38th parallel into South Korea. Thus, Arikara entered her second war. She was assigned to TF 90, the Amphibious Force, Far East. Due to the skeletal nature of American naval forces in Oriental waters, her assignments early in July consisted of the unlikely duty of escorting shipping between Japan and Korea until an escort group of more suitable warships could be assembled. The tug also served as a communications ship and landing control vessel during amphibious operations at Pusan on the southeastern tip of the Korean peninsula. In addition, she performed her familiar salvage and rescue operations.

After completing her initial missions at Pusan and between that port and Japan, Arikara moved to other areas of the Korean peninsula. On 5 September, she departed Yokosuka with Task Unit (TU) 90.04.3, the Pontoon Movement Unit, on her way to Inchon on the western coast of Korea. The tug supported the amphibious assault at Inchon from mid-September to mid-October, before heading, on the 16th of the latter month, for Wonsan on the northeastern coast of Korea. The 20 October amphibious assault on Wonsan, mooted by the arrival of rapidly advancing Republic of Korea (ROK) ground forces, was transformed into an enormous reinforcement and logistical support operation. Arikara spent about a month at Wonsan helping to clear the harbor and to increase its efficiency.

During the latter part of November, she completed upkeep at Sasebo. Towing and salvage operations in Japanese waters occupied her during December 1950 and early January 1951. Then, on 12 January, the tug shaped a course back to the United States. Voyaging by way of the Marianas and Hawaii, she arrived in Long Beach, California, in March. By the beginning of April, Arikara was at Bremerton, Washington, undergoing repairs; and she remained there until heading back to Hawaii on 11 June. For the remainder of 1951, she operated out of Pearl Harbor making only two voyages to destinations outside the Hawaiian operating area. In July, the ship towed an AFDB to Guam; in August, she returned to Pearl Harbor; and, in October and November, she made a round-trip voyage to Subic Bay in the Philippines.

On 3 January 1952, Arikara departed Pearl Harbor to deploy again to the western Pacific. By the end of the month, she was back in the Korean combat zone. During that tour of duty in the Far East, the tug served once more at Wonsan, as well as at Cho Do and Pusan, and stayed in the waters between Japan and Korea until the beginning of August. That fall, Arikara moved to the Marshall Islands to support Operation Ivy, a nuclear bomb test conducted at Eniwetok Atoll in November 1952. Although the conflict lasted into the summer of 1953, the tug saw no additional service in the Korean combat zone.

By the time that an armistice ended hostilities in Korea on 27 July 1953, Arikara had already settled into a schedule of operations out of Pearl Harbor that included towing missions from Hawaii to Johnston and Kanton Island islands and duty in the Aleutians. In the fall of 1954, the tug began peacetime deployments to the Far East and, for the remainder of her Navy career, she alternated between assignments in the western Pacific with the 7th Fleet and operations out of her home port, Pearl Harbor. During the first 12 years of that period, the tug's Far Eastern itinerary included mostly Japanese, Korean, and Philippine ports of call while her operations out of Pearl Harbor took her to the waters off the coast of Alaska and surrounding the Aleutians, as well as to islands in the Central Pacific.