11-4-17
After the Signing of the Documents of Surrender, the next four months (Occupation Duty) seems anti-climactic somehow. The Navy had the onerous task of getting millions of sailors home – a reverse order lottery – during which time men who had served their required time got to go home, and newer arrivals did not. By the time the ship left Japanese waters in early January 1946, about a third of the crew was still on board. Most departed the ship when she arrived in San Francisco, but a skeleton crew rode her up to Bremerton, WA, where she was decommissioned.
Meanwhile, the ship’s crew was tasked with “demilitaization duty” on Eastern Honshu, in the general area of Tokyo Bay. I have included below a sample from CA-69 Action Reports, retrieved from the National Archives by Bill.
steve