USS REPOSE was built for the United States Maritime Commission by the Sun Shipbuilding and Dry Dock Company at Chester Pennsylvania. Her keel was laid on 22 October 1943, and on 8 August 1944 she was launched as the SS Marine Beaver. She was delivered to the Navy prior to completion for conversion to a hospital ship. She was commissioned on 26 May 1945, and joined the Pacific Fleet on 14 July 1945. In September 1945 she left Buckner Bay on Okinawa to ride out an approaching typhoon. She was caught up in the storm and weathered 170 mile per hour winds and 75-foot seas, and passed through the eye of the typhoon on September 16.

She spent most of the years from 1945-1949 in the North China Station, assisting in evacuations of civilians and treatment of British casualties from actions by the Communist Chinese. Repose was manned by a Military Sea Transportation civilian crew from September 1949 until August 1950, when she resumed her role as an active duty Navy ship in the Korean Conflict. In 1952 a helicopter flight deck was added to her stern as a new era in direct evacuation of casualties began.

Repose was decommissioned in December 1954, but after ten and one-half years with the Reserve Fleet at Suisan Bay, California, she was again called to active service in October 1965. On 14 February 1966 she arrived in Chu Lai, Republic of Vietnam, and in April 1967 she was joined by her sister ship USS Sanctuary (AH-27). The ships alternated duty: one would spend three days off Dong Ha near the Demilitarized Zone (DMZ) in northern I Corps, while the other was in DaNang Harbor. Every three months one ship would steam to Subic Bay Naval Base in the Phillipines for approximately 10 days of maintenance (and some liberty for the crew), while the other stayed "on the line" off Dong Ha.

Prior to her return to her home port of Alameda on 20 April 1970, Repose admitted over 24,000 patients, including more than 9,000 battle casualties, performed nearly 8,000 surgical operations, and her flight deck saw over 15,000 consecutive safe helicopter landings. She served not only Allied military personnel, but also Vietnamese civilians. When operating rooms and personnel were available, surgeons restored the appearance of damaged faces and corrected severe birth defects for Vietnamese children.

The ship had two captains: the ship's skipper and a Medical Corps captain in charge of the Hospital in Repose. The hospital crew consisted of 25 physicians, 3 dentists, 4 Medical Service Corps officers, and 29 nurses assisted by about 315 chief petty officers and corpsmen. The ship's crew had a complement of about 315 enlisted men and 25 officers. All of these, plus three operating rooms, laboratory, x-ray facilities and beds for 750 patients were contained in a ship about 520 feet long and 70 feet wide.

In April 1970, as war casualty loads decreased, Repose left the South China Sea to return home, leaving Sanctuary as the sole Navy hospital ship in Southeast Asia. Repose paid a final visit to Subic Bay, then steamed to Hong Kong where she received a fresh coat of white paint for her hull and red for her crosses. Next stop was Kobe, Japan, where the crew was allowed liberty to attend the 1970 World's Fair. After a few days in Yokuska she steamed east across the Pacific to Pearl Harbor, and eventually arrived at her home port of Alameda, near Oakland, on 30 April 1970.

After she returned from Vietnam Repose served as a dockside hospital annex for the Long Beach Naval Hospital, but soon this proved to be uneconomical and she was reduced to scrap

One man's testimony and thank you to the crew of the USS REPOSE:

I want to thank everyone on the USS Repose. I was medivaced to the Repose on August 8th 1968. I was wounded in the left arm, shoulder, and chest area. I had severed nerves in my left arm and a severed artery in my shoulder, collapsed lung, etc etc. I was 19 and a member of the 101st Airborne Division. Form near death you patched me up to a point that after several years of rehab. I completed a B.S. Degree and Graduate work. I played college baseball, married, have a wife with a PhD, a son and a daughter, and a grand-daughter. Without what you did for me none of this could have happened. THANK YOU! One of my memories is of a Corpsman who had a reel to reel player and always played the "Righteous Brothers". I am having a great life and it has been possible because of the medical care I received on the USS Repose. Again THANKS, Quitman Lockley