South-central South Dakota has the county she was named for. Mrs. Gloria Dahlberg sponsored her. Oregon Shipbuilding Co. at Portland launched the Haskell attack transport on 3 November 1944 under a Maritime Commission contract. Acquisition and commissioning both came at Astoria on 28 November 1944, with Commander R. E. Perry in command.
California was the shakedown coast. Army flyers and civilian workers were aboard when she left Seattle on 5 February 1945, and Pearl Harbor saw her on 16 February. Four weeks of amphibious practice in the Hawaiian Islands followed. Marines for Okinawa sailed with her from Pearl Harbor on 15 March. Eniwetok and Ulithi, the large American bases, were calls on the passage. She arrived off Okinawa on 17 April.
Five days off that bitterly fought island put a Marine antiaircraft battalion ashore, and air attacks came often. She left for Saipan on 22 April. Guadalcanal was next; arrival on 10 May led to embarking units that were being shifted to Guam and Saipan. Her second Okinawa trip began at Saipan on 23 June, this time with Army engineers required for airfield construction on the island. From 27 June until 6 July she lay off Okinawa, then sailed carrying more than 250 battle casualties toward hospitals on Saipan. San Francisco received her on 26 July.
She remained in the United States until Japan had given up. A sailing on 16 August for the Philippines brought her to Manila on 6 September, and occupation troops came aboard. Further units joined at Lingayen Gulf. On 7 October she reached Wakayama and landed the occupation soldiers. Several ports in Japan figured in that duty, and she made one more trip to the Philippines for troops. Nagoya on 26 October was the departure; returnees boarded in the Philippines, and Pearl Harbor lay on the way to San Diego.
Magic Carpet took her to the Philippines once more, and many combat troops came home on that passage. On 20 February 1946 she left San Francisco, crossed by the Canal Zone, and reached Norfolk on 11 March. She decommissioned on 6 May, went back to the Maritime Commission, and was laid up along the James River. As of 1968 that reserve berth still held her. One battle star was credited for the war.