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:
“I need not tell you of the inadequacy of the American shipping marine on the Pacific Coast.... For this reason it seems to me that there is no subject to which Congress can better devote its attention in the coming session than the passage of a bill which shall encourage our merchant marine in such a way as to establish American lines directly between New York and the eastern ports and South American ports, and both our Pacific Coast ports and the Orient and the Philippines.”
—William Howard Taft (1857–1930)
“Mr. Speaker, at a time when the nation is again confronted with necessity for calling its young men into service in the interests of National Security, I cannot see the wisdom of denying our young women the opportunity to serve their country.”
—Lyndon Baines Johnson (1908–1973)