The USS General C. H. Muir was built in 1944 by Kaiser Co. Inc. in Richmond, California and named after U.S. Army General Charles Henry Muir.
She was a transport ship for the US Navy during WWII, then used by the US Coast Guard for a short period, then transferred to the US Army as USAT General C. H. Muir in 1946. On March 1, 1950 she was transferred to the Military Sea Transportation Service (MSTS) as USNS General C. H. Muir (T-AP-142), transporting thousands of refugees of WWII to the Americas and Australia. In late 1952, she carried reinforcements to the UN troops fighting in Korea. She made another similar voyage before being placed in the National Reserve Fleet in 1955. In 1968, the ship was sold and converted into a container vessel named the SS Chicago. In 1975, the American company that owned her sold her to Puerto Rico where she was renamed the SS San Juan. She operated until 1985 and was later scrapped.
The SS General CH Muir carried Janis Vinakmens, his wife and 3 children to the USA from Bremerhaven on August 14th, 1949. They were bound for Elk Point, South Dakota.
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I was the Chaplain’s assistant aboard the Muir when it shuttled between Staten Island in NYC and Bremerhaven, Germany, in 1952 and early 1953, but don’t recall it ever being positioned in the Far East during that time.
Hello I found that my father was on this ship Bremen to New York May 1951. December 1988 my father, mother and I toured Germany (My sister was an exchange student in Denmark at the time we would celebrate her birthday up there). During that trip I heard stories of the DP past as my father returned to areas he knew as a DP. September 1989 he was on the US Precision Helicopter Team that took the World Precision Helicopter championships (First seven places defeating the Soviets)
my family and i came to new york from bremerhaven germany on the ss general muir. we left germany on feb 11, 1951 and arrived in new york on feb. 19th. the weather was so stormy we actually had to don lifejackets and wait on deck for fear the ship would go down. i was only 5 but i remember seeing the white cliffs of dover as we sailed threw the english channel and then the icebergs in the north atlantic. when we disembarked, the red cross, i believe, gave us coffee and doughnuts– my first american food.