Pacific Service
The veteran destroyer and her crew turned south 21 April 1945 and headed for the still-hot war in the Pacific, reaching Pearl Harbor via the Panama Canal and San Diego 15 May. After training exercises and duty as a carrier plane guard, Herndon sailed to Eniwetok 12 July and remained in the rear area escorting convoys between Eniwetok, Guam, and Saipan through the end of the long Pacific war.
Japanese capitulation came at last with the formal signing of the surrender in Tokyo Bay on 2 September, and Herndon proceeded to the China coast to enforce provisions of the peace. Reaching Dairen, Manchuria on 10 September, she continued to Tsingtao, China 16 September. On that day Vice Admiral Kanako, IJN, and his staff came aboard Herndon to sign and implement the unconditional surrender of all Japanese-controlled combatant and merchant vessels in the Tsingtao area.
Read more about this topic: USS Herndon (DD-638)
Famous quotes containing the words pacific and/or service:
“We, the lineal representatives of the successful enactors of one scene of slaughter after another, must, whatever more pacific virtues we may also possess, still carry about with us, ready at any moment to burst into flame, the smoldering and sinister traits of character by means of which they lived through so many massacres, harming others, but themselves unharmed.”
—William James (1842–1910)
“O good old man, how well in thee appears
The constant service of the antique world,
When service sweat for duty, not for meed!”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)