USS Beckham

The ship reached Eniwetok atoll on Washington' Birthday and—after discharging cargo for the U.S. Marine Corps garrison on Engebi Island—lingered there awaiting onward routing.

Assigned to Task Unit (TU) 12.6.2, Beckham departed Eniwetok on 2 March in a convoy bound for the Volcano Islands.

At night her men could hear airplane engines as Boeing B 29 "Superfortresses" winged their way toward Japan to carry out some of the first massed raids on Tokyo.

Beckham stood offshore, witnessing the 25th Marines' mop-up of the last pocket of enemy soldiers in an area studded by caves and emplacements.

Crowded conditions off the island's east coast prompted Beckham to shift her anchorage a number of times before 18 March when she began taking on board elements of the 4th Marine Division.

She reached Apra Harbor, Guam, on 22 March, transferred landing craft to the Pacific Amphibious Forces Replacement Boat Pool, and embarked additional marines.

After disembarking the marines at Kahului on Maui, she returned to Pearl Harbor on 7 April and devoted the next few days to ship's work and taking on fuel, water, and supplies.

Underway that day, she headed for the Ryūkyūs in convoy WOK-27, arrived off Okinawa's Hagushi beachhead on the afternoon of 24 June, and commenced disembarking troops and unloading cargo.

That evening, she went to general quarters and started her smoke generators as part of an effort to blanket the area with a chemical fog to conceal the fleet.

Shifting to Honolulu on the 23d, the attack transport embarked passengers and loaded cargo and stores before getting underway for Eniwetok on 26 July.

Ending the first leg of this voyage to the western Pacific on 3 August, Beckham sailed with task unit TU 96.6.17 and reached Ulithi on the 8th.

Her landing craft (LCVP) not only took her cargo ashore, but brought back former Allied prisoners of war who had been incarcerated there, 138 Americans veterans of Bataan and 30 British, some of whom had been in captivity since the fall of Singapore in February 1942.

Anchoring in the Gulf of Bohai, China, on 14 October, Beckham discharged passengers and cargo for Tianjin before proceeding to the Shandong Peninsula.

Beckham arrived at Manila on the morning of 3 November and sailed for San Francisco on the 6th with 1,970 passengers, a capacity load of military humanity that spilled into the cargo holds and onto the decks.