Transfer To Pacific Theatre Operations
Wilhoite trained at Guantánamo Bay after her refit at Charleston and then headed for the Pacific, transiting the Panama Canal on 16 July. Arriving at San Diego, California, on the 24th, Wilhoite sailed for Hawaii with CortDiv 59 -- Edsall, Stewart, and Moore -- arriving there on 5 August. In ensuing days, Wilhoite and her consorts trained in Hawaiian waters.
Wilhoite had arrived too late to participate in active operations, however, because the war in the Pacific ended while she was training in the Hawaiian Islands. On 14 August 1945 (west of the international date line), the Japanese capitulated.
Wilhoite departed Pearl Harbor on 20 August bound for Saipan in the Marianas. After her arrival there, she escorted SS Sea Sturgeon to Okinawa in company with the minesweeper Ptarmigan. While engaged in that local escort duty, Wilhoite was forced to reverse course off Okinawa during a typhoon; the ship did not enter Buckner Bay, but proceeded instead back to Saipan.
Meanwhile, the surrender of Japanese garrisons was proceeding apace. In late September, Wilhoite sailed for Marcus Island, relieving Gilmore there as station ship on 27 September. Anchoring off the south shore of the island, Wilhoite supported the small American occupying force in case of any trouble with the garrison of some 2,400 Japanese troops still on the island. By 8 October, the latter was on board the transport Daikai Maru and on its way back to Japan. Wilhoite, herself, in company with LCI-336, departed Marcus on 12 October, bound for Saipan.
Wilhoite subsequently operated on local escort missions to Pagan Island, Agrihan Island, and Iwo Jima and then she supported the American occupation of Japan until 6 January 1946. At that time, the destroyer escort—her task in the Far East completed—sailed for the United States, via Saipan and Pearl Harbor. After touching at San Diego, she proceeded on to New York, via the Panama Canal. Following a complete overhaul at the New York Naval Shipyard, Wilhoite shifted south to Green Cove Springs, Florida, where she was decommissioned on 19 June 1946 and placed in the Atlantic Reserve Fleet.
Read more about this topic: USS Wilhoite (DE-397)
Famous quotes containing the words transfer, pacific, theatre and/or operations:
“If it had not been for storytelling, the black family would not have survived. It was the responsibility of the Uncle Remus types to transfer philosophies, attitudes, values, and advice, by way of storytelling using creatures in the woods as symbols.”
—Jackie Torrence (b. 1944)
“The principle of majority rule is the mildest form in which the force of numbers can be exercised. It is a pacific substitute for civil war in which the opposing armies are counted and the victory is awarded to the larger before any blood is shed. Except in the sacred tests of democracy and in the incantations of the orators, we hardly take the trouble to pretend that the rule of the majority is not at bottom a rule of force.”
—Walter Lippmann (1889–1974)
“As in a theatre the eyes of men,
After a well-graced actor leaves the stage,
Are idly bent on him that enters next,
Thinking his prattle to be tedious,
Even so, or with much more contempt, men’s eyes
Did scowl on gentle Richard.”
—William Shakespeare (1564–1616)
“A sociosphere of contact, control, persuasion and dissuasion, of exhibitions of inhibitions in massive or homeopathic doses...: this is obscenity. All structures turned inside out and exhibited, all operations rendered visible. In America this goes all the way from the bewildering network of aerial telephone and electric wires ... to the concrete multiplication of all the bodily functions in the home, the litany of ingredients on the tiniest can of food, the exhibition of income or IQ.”
—Jean Baudrillard (b. 1929)