In the mid to late 1940s she sailed in trans-Pacific American President Lines passenger service with sister ship SS General Meigs.

With the outbreak of the Korean War, she was reacquired by the Navy as a civilian-crewed Military Sea Transportation Service (MSTS) vessel, and redesignated USNS General W. H. Gordon (T-AP-117).

In March 1950, at Tientsin, China, she embarked hundreds of Westerners again as well as the U.S. Consul General from Shanghai, who a few days earlier had hauled down his flag, the last flying over a diplomatic post on the Chinese mainland.

USNS General W. H. Gordon (T-AP-117) departed San Francisco in December 1951 on the first of many trans-Pacific voyages in support of Korean War operations.

She was modernized at Portland, Oregon, between June and December 1953, with her World War II vintage lifeboats and davits being replaced and eight new empty positions for 3 in (76 mm)/50 twin gun mounts fitted, presumably for service as a regular Navy armed transport if required.

Transferred to the Atlantic in late 1956, she was laid up in the Maritime Administration's Hudson River reserve fleet in June 1957 and a year later stricken from the Naval Vessel Register.

In 1965 the transport went to the Pacific to support the expanding Vietnam War, making numerous voyages between the U.S. West Coast and Southeast Asia.

In September 1967 she transported troops from the 198th Infantry Brigade from Oakland to Da Nang harbor, arriving after a stop at Subic Bay in the Philippines in October 1967.