Nakagusuku Wan, later renamed Buckner Bay, is the Okinawa harbor that frames the Caine’s passage from kamikaze damage to its final, short-lived minesweeping assignment. The ship first headed there to collect mail; after the attack, it returned damaged and spent weeks waiting for repair and new orders, its wartime usefulness caught between what it could still do and what the fleet needed elsewhere.

Setting and the Approach to the Harbor

The Caine was rounding Okinawa’s southern end en route to Nakagusuku Wan to pick up mail for the mine fleet when a kamikaze appeared. It was ten o’clock on a gray, cloudy morning; the sea was calm, and there had been no air-raid warning. The plane struck while the ship was approaching its harbor destination, making the attack a rupture in an otherwise routine errand rather than an engagement sought there.

Damage and Delay at Buckner Bay

After the strike, repair crews from the tender Pluto quickly patched the Caine’s damaged deckhouse. They spent two weeks examining the wrecked fireroom, however, and concluded that repairing its boiler would consume too much of the tender’s time and resources. With newer destroyers and destroyer escorts judged more urgent cases, the hole in the deck was plated over and the Caine was sent to an anchor berth far up the harbor. It remained there as the Okinawa campaign ended and ComMinePac’s operations officer considered what to do with the ship.

The Caine still had two boilers in its undamaged fireroom and could make about twenty knots. In early July, Captain Ramsbeck came aboard and took it to sea for a trial run, stirring up barnacles after weeks at anchor. He explained that MinePac was reluctant to send the old ship home for overhaul while it retained any useful life: away from the forward area, it might not return in time for the large minesweeping task ahead. The Caine’s smooth run, and Tom Keefer’s willingness to join another operation, helped secure an assignment. The next day, orders arrived for a China Sea sweep, with the Caine penciled in.

Return and the Harbor’s Aftermath

The Caine’s minesweeping career proved brief. When the number-one boiler’s fuel pumps failed, the ship slowed to twelve knots, below the safe maneuvering speed for an area of drifting mines. Ordered out of the line and back to Okinawa, it set off one more mine on the return journey. The Caine limped into Buckner Bay, the harbor’s new name, and Tom Keefer requested a berth alongside the Pluto for repairs.

The tender replied that more urgent work would prevent it from accommodating the Caine until late August and instructed the crew to make repairs themselves with materials the tender could provide. Once again the old minesweeper anchored in the bay, accumulating rust and barnacles. Nakagusuku Wan thus marks not a restoration to full service but a holding place: the ship could still be sent toward the work ahead, yet damage and competing demands repeatedly returned it to delay.