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:
“The doctor of Geneva stamped the sand
That lay impounding the Pacific swell,
Patted his stove-pipe hat and tugged his shawl.”
—Wallace Stevens (1879–1955)
“You had to face your ends when young
‘Twas wine or women, or some curse
But never made a poorer song
That you might have a heavier purse,
Nor gave loud service to a cause
That you might have a troop of friends.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)