Cam Ranh Bay

They were independent contractors unloading ammunition, building supplies and auto parts for the military at Cam Ranh Bay, one of the busiest ports in the world.

When President Lyndon Johnson delivered a speech to U.S. troops at Cam Ranh Bay in South Vietnam, he proclaimed that "you know what you are doing, and you know why you are doing it — and you are doing it."

Following the death of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968, white U.S. service members based at the Cam Ranh Bay, South Vietnam naval base, celebrated his death by parading around the base in Ku Klux Klan-style white sheets and hoisted a Confederate flag atop the headquarters building, according to the 1997 book “Fighting on Two Fronts: African Americans and the Vietnam War.”

Mr. Esmond volunteered for the Army in 1966, and spent a year ferrying troops and supplies from a base in Cam Ranh Bay, Vietnam, as the coxswain of a 75-foot landing craft.

The three vessels will stop at Cam Ranh Bay in Vietnam over the weekend to replenish supplies, the statement said.