USS Nicholson (DD-442), a Gleaves-class destroyer, was the third ship named for the Nicholson family, prominent in the early history of the Navy. She was laid down at the Boston Navy Yard on 1 November 1939, launched on 31 May 1940 and commissioned on 3 June 1941. She escorted North Atlantic convoys until the fall of 1942, joined the Casablanca landings four days late because of a turbine casualty, and was at Bizerte and the first assaults at Salerno.
She sailed for the Pacific in January 1944, escorted LSTs in the Cape Gloucester campaign off New Guinea and gave gunfire support throughout the New Guinea campaign. At Seeadler Harbor in the Admiralties she was hit by a 4-inch shell from a battery on Hauwei Island, which killed three men and wounded four, and she silenced the battery. She screened the fast carriers from August 1944 and was at Leyte Gulf before an overhaul at Seattle.
She returned to the western Pacific in February 1945 and arrived off Okinawa in late March. Serving on the exposed radar picket line she came through untouched by kamikazes but rescued survivors from the stricken destroyers Little and Morrison. She was off Honshu at the end of the war and entered Tokyo Bay on 15 September 1945.
Sources: Dictionary of American Naval Fighting Ships (DANFS) as reproduced on Wikipedia, NavSource Online (commanding officer list), and Wikimedia Commons (photograph record).