Central Wisconsin is the county, and she carried the numeral I. Mrs. E. L. Greene sponsored the ship. Kaiser Shipbuilding Co. at Vancouver, Washington, built the Haskell attack transport under a Maritime Commission contract and launched her on 7 October 1944. A loan charter brought her to the Navy on 27 October 1944, and Commander J. W. McElroy commissioned her the next day.
Shakedown exercises led on to amphibious training off southern California and in the Hawaiian Islands. Passengers from the army, the marines, and the navy were aboard when she left Pearl Harbor on her own on 24 January 1945, bound for Espiritu Santo and Guadalcanal. The New Hebrides landfall was 2 February. Army passengers and general cargo went ashore there, and she continued to the Solomons, reaching Guadalcanal on the 7th. Late that month the drills grew intensive, aimed at the Okinawa campaign ahead. On 22 March she headed for Ulithi, firing practices held on the way. The fleet run out to the Ryukyus got underway on 27 March.
Boats began leaving her just before dawn on 1 April, smoke boats in the lead, and troops and cargo kept moving ashore into the afternoon. Enemy fire cost her a single landing craft and no people. The assault zone held her until 5 April, when she turned for the Marianas. Saipan sent her back toward Pearl Harbor, and maintenance started after she came in on the 20th. Training followed, then a call at San Francisco for troops bound to Hawaii. Pearl Harbor on 8 June was the return, and two days later she headed west once more, by Eniwetok and Ulithi, for Okinawa. On 14 July she entered the anchorage just renamed Buckner Bay and sent passengers and cargo ashore.
Still at anchor there on 22 July, the hull shook under a violent explosion. Records the Japanese left, read after the war, show a kaiten at work, a one-man suicide submarine put out by I-53. Damage was extensive, and the repairs ran long.
On 16 September she sailed to Nagasaki and embarked former prisoners of several nationalities for a passage to Okinawa. From October into February she swept mines off Nagoya and through Hiro Wan and Ise Wan. The United States was the heading late in February 1946. Commission ended at San Francisco on 8 May, when the owners took her back. Two battle stars were earned in the war.