USS Yakutat, a 1,766-ton Barnegat class small seaplane tender, was built at Seattle, Washington, and was commissioned in March 1944. She departed the West Coast for the Central Pacific in June 1944 and in July she began tending seaplanes at Saipan. She arrived in the Palau Islands one day after the landings at Pelelieu in September and serviced seaplanes there until November.

From December 1944 to March 1945 Yakutat shuttled between Ulithi, Guam, Saipan, the Palaus, and the Marianas, supporting seaplanes and providing transport services. In late March she moved forward to the Ryukyu Islands and set up a seaplane base at Kerama Retto in support of the Okinawa landings. Yakutat continued to support seaplanes there and at Okinawa through the end of the war. After two months of duty in Japan, she proceeded to the West Coast in November 1945 for inactivation. She was decommissioned in July 1946.

In August 1948 Yakutat was loaned to the Coast Guard as the cutter Yakutat (WAVP-380, later WHEC-380). She served out of New Bedford, Massachusetts, primarily on weather station duty. Yakutat was transferred to South Vietnam in January 1971 as Tran Nhat Duat. After the fall of South Vietnam, she was transferred to the Philippines in April 1976 as a source of spare parts for other ex-U. S. ships.