USS Geneva ( APA - 86 ) USS " Geneva " ( APA - 86 ) was a " Gilliam " - class attack transport that served with the US Navy during World War II . Commissioned late in the war , she was initially assigned to transport duties and consequently did not participate in combat operations . " Geneva " was named after a county in Alabama . She was launched under Maritime Commission contract 31 January 1945 by Consolidated Steel at Wilmington , California ; acquired by the Navy 21 March 1945 and commissioned the following day , Comdr . Peter J . Neimo in command . Operational history . World War II . Following shakedown out of San Diego , " Geneva " departed that port 19 May 1945 with over 500 marines and sailors for Pearl Harbor and Majuro atoll , Marshall Islands , where she arrived 7 June . After embarking marines and Japanese prisoners of war , she picked up additional passengers at Kwajalein for passage to Pearl Harbor . At Pearl Harbor , she picked up veterans whom she landed at San Francisco 27 June . Proceeding to Seattle , she embarked nearly a thousand soldiers for the garrison forces on Okinawa , debarking them at Buckner Bay 12 August . After hostilities . " Geneva " sailed from Okinawa 5 September for Korea and landed Army units at Inchon 8 September . She returned to Okinawa 15 September , weathered a typhoon , and embarked the 11th Artillery Regiment of the 4th Marine Battalion and their cargo for passage to Taku , China , where she arrived 5 October . There she received 21 European repatriates on board , embarked 302 others at Tsingtao ( now Qingdao ) 7 October , and carried her passengers to Hong Kong on the 13th . These 302 passengers were also European repatriates , mostly British , who had spent between three and four years in various Japanese concentration camps . They had been rescued from the " Weihsien Civil Assembly Centre " at what is now Weifang city , Shandong Province , on 17 August 1945 by 7 US paratroopers of the Duck Mission , only two days after VJ Day . In Hong Kong the passengers were handed over to the British forces , and repatriated to their home countries in the next few months by RAPWI . On this passage , when the " Geneva " had to skirt the outside of the Island of Taiwan , then Formosa , because the Formosa Straights had not yet been swept for mines , she struck an even worse typhoon on 9 October 1945 , which virtually destroyed the US base at Okinawa . She had a destroyer escort ahead of her , but the waves meant they only caught sight each other every five or ten minutes . By the grace of God both survived . At Hong Kong , she received Chinese troops and equipment , transported them to Chinwangtao 30 October , and returned to Hong Kong to embark more Chinese troops for passage to Tsingtao , arriving 14 November . " Geneva " departed Tsingtao on 23 November , embarked over a thousand homeward - bound veterans at Luzon , Philippines , and reached San Francisco 19 December . On 11 January 1946 , she began a troop - transport voyage from San Francisco to Pearl Harbor and returned to San Diego 7 February . Operation Crossroads . The attack transport returned to Pearl Harbor 2 March for training in the Hawaiian area until she departed 17 May to serve in Operation Crossroads , a joint atomic bomb experiment of the Army and Navy in the Marshall Islands at Bikini Atoll . More than 200 ships , 150 aircraft , and some 42 , 000 men were involved in this vast experiment directed by Vice Admiral William H . P . Blandy . Seventy - five target ships - American , German , and Japanese - were moored in the target area . " Geneva " arrived off Bikini on 30 May 1946 and rode at anchor for a month . Her crew then transferred to since " Geneva " was to be one of the target ships in " Test Able " on the morning of 1 July 1946 when the fourth atomic bomb to be exploded and the first ever detonated over water was to be dropped from a B - 29 . The attack transport survived the explosion and the huge column of water and steam that rose to and formed a mushroom - shaped cloud . " Geneva " was declared free of radioactivity the following day . She also survived ` ' Test Baker " 25 July . That morning at 0835 an atomic bomb suspended below LSM - 60 was exploded - the first to be detonated under water . " Geneva " was in normal operation 4 days after that explosion , steaming to Kwajalein 25 August , then proceeding via Hawaii to San Francisco , where she arrived 5 November . Decommission . " Geneva " departed San Francisco on 4 December , touched San Diego and transited the Panama Canal for Norfolk , Virginia , where she arrived on the 27th . She was decommissioned at Norfolk 23 January 1947 , and her name was struck from the Navy List on 25 February . She was returned to the Maritime Commission on 2 April and joined the National Defense Reserve Fleet at James River , Virginia . " Geneva " was transferred to Wilmington , North Carolina , in July 1955 and sold for scrap by the Maritime Administration on 2 November 1966 .