High Quality Content by WIKIPEDIA articles! After shakedown off Florida, LST-854 departed New Orleans for the Pacific on 15 January 1945. Steaming via the Panama Canal, the West Coast, and Pearl Harbor, she reached Ulithi, Caroline Islands on 1 April. There she prepared to support the invasion of Okinawa; then, with an Army Aviation Engineer Battalion on board, she sailed on 12 April for that strategic island which lay at the gateway to the heart of the Japanese Empire.