She laid down as a Type C2-S-AJ3 ship MC hull 1696 on 21 September 1944 by North Carolina Shipbuilding Company, Wilmington, North Carolina; launched on 18 November 1944; sponsored by Miss Heloise Pike; acquired by the Navy on 28 November 1944; converted by the Bethlehem Steel Co., Brooklyn, N.Y., into an attack cargo ship; and commissioned on 2 May 1945.

For the remainder of the year, the ship shuttled supplies and troops between American bases in the Far East, calling at Okinawa, Guam, Tientsin, Tsingtao, and Shanghai.

She returned to the West Coast on 16 December 1945 and operated out of San Diego with Amphibious Forces, Pacific Fleet until 22 June 1946 when she was deployed to Pearl Harbor for three months.

Skagit operated between Okinawa, Guam, and China until the following November, broken only by a 19-day cruise back to the West Coast in July.

The cargo ship returned to San Francisco on 25 February; was prepared for inactivation; and, on 30 June, was placed out of commission, in reserve, and berthed at the Mare Island Naval Shipyard.

This training period was interrupted for a month in May when Skagit was ordered to sail to Inchon at flank speed to evacuate personnel and equipment if the situation there became more critical.

[1] For the next ten years, the cargo ship divided her time between the western Pacific and operations along the West Coast, south to Acapulco, Mexico, and north to Alaska.

On 28 January, Skagit, as a unit of Task Group 76.6 made an assault landing near Thach Tru in southern Quảng Ngãi Province, in Operation Double Eagle.

Twelve amphibious force ships landed 5,000 United States Marines against the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese there.

Skagit returned to Vietnam and during the period from 15 September to 1 November, she used her LCMs to transport more than 6,700 tons of combat supplies from Da Nang up the Perfume River to Huế.