World War II, Pacific Theatre Operations
She was laid down on 9 March 1942, at Los Angeles Shipbuilding and Drydock Co., San Pedro, California, as Heavy-hull Repair Ship ARH-1, and launched on 3 April 1943. Jason was commissioned on 19 June 1944, with Capt. A.O.R. Bergesen in command.
After brief shakedown and fitting out, the repair ship arrived Pearl Harbor on 6 July 1944 on the first leg of her journey to the Pacific battle area. She arrived Purvis Bay in the Solomon Islands on 17 August to commence operations with Service Squadron 10. Two months later she arrived Ulithi, where she was to spend the greater part of the war, performing the task of keeping the U.S. Navy's ships at peak strength and operating efficiency.
For seven months at Ulithi, as American forces captured island after island from the Japanese, Jason, many times under enemy attack, repaired broken hulls, buckled decks and twisted bulkheads of every type of ship in the U.S. Navy. This floating shipyard turned seemingly hopeless battle wrecks into rejuvenated fighting ships again able to stand out gallantly in the final victorious months. As the action crept closer to Japan, Jason sailed for Leyte arriving there on 28 May 1945. She remained there for the duration of the war continuing to service ships of the Pacific Fleet.
Read more about this topic: USS Jason (AR-8)
Famous quotes containing the words world, war, pacific, theatre and/or operations:
“It is clear to everyone that astronomy at all events compels the soul to look upwards, and draws it from the things of this world to the other.”
—Plato (c. 427347 B.C.)
“The great war that broke so suddenly upon the world two years ago, and which has swept up within its flame so great a part of the civilized world, has affected us very profoundly.... With its causes and its objects we are not concerned. The obscure fountains from which its stupendous flood has burst we are not interested to search for or explore.”
—Woodrow Wilson (18561924)
“The doctor of Geneva stamped the sand
That lay impounding the Pacific swell,
Patted his stove-pipe hat and tugged his shawl.”
—Wallace Stevens (18791955)
“The theatre is supremely fitted to say: Behold! These things are. Yet most dramatists employ it to say: This moral truth can be learned from beholding this action.”
—Thornton Wilder (18971975)
“It may seem strange that any road through such a wilderness should be passable, even in winter, when the snow is three or four feet deep, but at that season, wherever lumbering operations are actively carried on, teams are continually passing on the single track, and it becomes as smooth almost as a railway.”
—Henry David Thoreau (18171862)