 During the next two years, "Bayfield" made three more cruises to the Orient and performed special duty in August and September 1954, assisting in the evacuation of refugees that resulted from the partition of Vietnam into a communist north and a democratic south.As one of more than 40 amphibious ships employed in "Operation Passage to Freedom", the transport provided food, shelter, and care to the evacuees as she carried them south to Saigon.She returned to San Diego on 9 October and commenced a routine of alternating local training operations along the West Coast with deployments to the Far East.