Final Pacific Theatre Operations
Arriving off Okinawa on 20 May 1945, at a time of mass kamikaze attacks, Token experienced her first of many days of enemy air activity. While performing screening activities on 28 May, Token rescued and captured two survivors from a splashed Japanese aircraft. After repairs at Kerama Retto in June, she swept waters off Okinawa, in the East China Sea, and in Tokyo Bay.
Token was the second surface vessel to enter Tokyo Bay, on 2 September 1945, following the Revenge (AM-110), to sweep the harbor prior to the Missouri (BB-63) entering and the signing of the surrender document by Japan.
Chief Montgomery stated that the Token came alongside the USS Missouri on the morning of 2 September 1945 and took on a load of fresh water before heading to Tokyo Harbor. The Token and the Revenge then raced to see which ship could enter the harbor first. But the Token received a message from Admiral Halsey's staff to back off and let the Revenge enter first.
In the following months, Token continued sweeps of formerly contested waters off the Pescadores and China before steaming – via Sasebo, Kyūshū, and Pearl Harbor – to Charleston, South Carolina.
Read more about this topic: USS Token (AM-126)
Famous quotes containing the words final, pacific, theatre and/or operations:
“In the final analysis, “style” is art. And art is nothing more or less than various modes of stylized, dehumanized representation.”
—Susan Sontag (b. 1933)
“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)
“Our instructed vagrancy, which has hardly time to linger by the hedgerows, but runs away early to the tropics, and is at home with palms and banyans—which is nourished on books of travel, and stretches the theatre of its imagination to the Zambesi.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“You can’t have operations without screams. Pain and the knife—they’re inseparable.”
—Jean Scott Rogers. Robert Day. Mr. Blount (Frank Pettingell)