Built by the Permanente Metals Corp between the 22nd February and April 28, 1945, this Boulder Victory ship came too late in the war to see any significant service. She was transferred to the US Army in July 1946 where she was re-baptized as USNS Sgt. Andrew Miller. The newly formed Military Sea Transportation Service (MSTS) acquired her in 1950 and put her to use carrying cargo for units being shipped to Korea and Japan. She made a total of three runs between ports in Korea and the US Pacific Islands – Pearl Harbor and Hawaii – throughout 1950 and 1951 and was one of the ships used for the evacuation of Hungnam. In 1954, she participated in Operation Passage to Freedom, transporting Vietnamese civilians to the south after the country’s partition, a mission she repeated nearly two decades after, during the evacuation of Saigon, but this time destined for a home port. Although she was struck sometime in the early 80s she most likely never received a retrofitting to replace all the asbestos heavily used in her construction, remaining a potential source of contamination for crew and passengers to the end of her life.
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