USS Paricutin (AE-18) was laid down under Maritime Commission Contract, 7 December 1944 by North Carolina Shipbuilding Company, Wilmington, N.C. as MC hull 1708; launched 30 January 1945; sponsored by Senora Arias De Garcia Jurado, Mexican Embassy, Washington, D.C.; acquired and commissioned 3 March 1945.

Reactivated 24 June 1950, due to the Korean War, Paricutin recommissioned 28 July 1950 and was assigned to Service Squadron 1.

She returned to San Francisco 19 March 1953 and was stateside when the s:Korean Armistice Agreement was announced in July.

August 1953 saw the beginning of a series of peacetime annual WestPac deployments for Paricutin, as she sailed from San Francisco, bound for Sasebo, Japan, on the 7th.

These normally consisted of six or seven months of operations and training with Seventh Fleet units with port calls at Hong Kong, Japan, Korea, the Philippines, Taiwan, Guam and other Pacific islands.