Yokes was a seaman second class attached to the Naval Armed Guard detachment aboard the merchant ship SS Steel Navigator, a straggler from Convoy ON-137, in the North Atlantic Ocean in October 1942.

Yokes and his shipmates volunteered to go below and perform the physically exhausting task of shifting ballast to trim the ship, working for some 30 hours without rest.

Lookouts aboard Steel Navigator spotted U-610's periscope, and the Naval Armed Guard unit swiftly manned its guns and opened fire.

After shakedown off Bermuda and post-shakedown repairs at the Norfolk Navy Yard at Portsmouth, Virginia, Yokes steamed to the United States West Coast via the Panama Canal, and arrived at San Diego, California, on 14 March 1945.

She made port at Pearl Harbor, Territory of Hawaii, on 26 March 1945 and trained at Maui with underwater demolition teams for one week before she departed for World War II service in the Western Pacific.

After nearly 18 years of inactivity in reserve, she was stricken from the Navy List on 1 April 1964 and in 1965 was sold to the National Metal and Steel Corporation of Terminal Island, California, for scrapping.