Southern Michigan is the county she was named for. Mrs. Olaf Haugen sponsored her. At Vancouver, Washington, Kaiser Shipbuilding Co. laid the keel on 26 May 1944 for the Maritime Commission, and the launch came on 11 September 1944. Commander Carson R. Miller commissioned the Haskell attack transport on 11 October 1944.
Assault troops were what she had been built to carry onto a hostile shore. San Francisco supplied her landing craft, and she left on 26 November 1944 for the Pacific. Hawaiian waters held the amphibious training. A sailing on 27 January 1945 took her to Saipan, where the last rehearsals before the fighting were run. The 5th Marines, together with the 67th Naval Construction Battalion, furnished the 1,503 men who embarked. Three days at sea ended on 19 February, D-day, at Iwo Jima. Boats from the ship helped put the opening marine wave on the beach; the troops she herself carried waited three days. She pulled out on the 27th for Guam, landed marine casualties there, and made ready for the last great landing of the war.
South to Espiritu Santo, she took aboard more than 1,000 soldiers of the Army 27th Division as reinforcement for Okinawa. Troops and cargo went in by day, and each night she hauled clear to open water. From 9 to 14 April, kamikaze attacks in the area did her no damage. Later she carried troops from the Philippines across to Japan in Transport Squadron 16, under Commodore J. B. McGovern. On 2 September she was in Tokyo Bay with 1,135 men of the 1st Cavalry as Japan surrendered. San Francisco, her home port, saw her on 31 October. Magic Carpet sent her twice more into the western Pacific, and on 3 August 1946 she decommissioned at Stockton and entered the Reserve Fleet.
Korea brought her back on 30 September 1950, Captain E. M. Brown in command and San Diego the home port. Except for 1952 and 1956, part of every year was spent in the Far East. The first outing left on 22 March 1951 for Yokosuka. Mostly she worked among the Japanese islands, twice lifting men and supplies into the Korean fighting, and she was home on 27 November. May 1953 put her on transport duty in Korean waters again. Inchon in July was where she lay while the final truce was signed. Vietnam, and the islands lying off China, became the crises that followed. Practice with Korean marines early in December 1954 led into a lift of Nationalist civilians and troops off the Tachens, Formosa being the place they were taken. Karl L. Ranking, American ambassador to China, rode the closing trip of that work so he could see it himself. Marines still drilled with her each year, off California, in Hawaiian waters, or on other Pacific grounds. Philippine troops joined her in 1957. Off Borneo in 1959 the partner force was British. A cold-weather drill with Korean marines followed in 1962, and the Royal Thailand Navy exercised with her in 1965.
From 1963 the South China Sea was a regular station. After Maddox and Turner Joy were attacked by North Vietnamese torpedo boats in August 1964, she fitted out for what was, since her return to service, a tenth Far East tour. People-to-people work went on in spite of that new crisis. She left San Diego on 7 November 1964 carrying textbooks and medical supplies, 10,000 pounds in all, for Vietnam and the Philippines. Marines filled her while she waited in Task Force 76. That South China Sea station opened on 12 December and closed on 10 April 1965, the day Marines of the 3d Division went ashore at Da Nang. Hue came five days afterward, boats from the ship setting men of the 4th Marines on the beach. Reloaded at Okinawa, she made an assault landing of more of those Marines at Chu Lai on 7 May, and on the 24th delivered 2,001 tons of ammunition to the same men. A short home stay began about a month later.
Battalion Landing Team 1/1 sailed with her from California on 9 August 1965. No attack transport had previously run straight through to Da Nang, and she arrived on the 28th. San Diego on 28 October closed the trip. The rest of that year and the first eight months of 1966 were west-coast months of type training and amphibious exercises. Her last deployment began on 4 September 1966. Marines went to Okinawa, and on the way she came through typhoon Ida. A stop in Japan preceded a lift of Republic of Korea troops from Pusan to Da Nang. In December she ferried American servicemen between Okinawa and Vietnam, then returned to the west coast, reaching San Diego on 8 January 1967 to prepare for inactivation. Decommissioning came on 20 June 1967. Transfer to the Maritime Administration was 23 April 1968, and the Navy struck her on 30 June 1968. Suisan Bay, California, was the reserve berth that held her after that. Two battle stars were credited for the Second World War and three for Korea.