in the United States, with an average of 0.194 accidents in marine transport operations occurring per 1,000,000 man-hours; by 1947, the port had only three incidents in two years. In the aftermath of World War II, the Brooklyn Army Base received the bodies of several thousand soldiers who had died while fighting the war. The first boat carrying American World War II casualties back to the United States arrived in San Francisco in October 1947, whereupon the bodies were transported cross-country to Brooklyn Army Base. A ship carrying 4,212 soldiers' bodies traveled directly to the Brooklyn Army Terminal the next month. By July 1948, the base was receiving 18,500 soldiers' bodies within a span of two weeks. In the years after World War II ended, the Brooklyn Army Base was the port of arrival or departure for 200,000 soldiers per year. As per custom, the 328th Army Band would play every time troops arrived or departed from the base. During the late 1950s, the base received Hungarian Revolution refugees, as well as victims of a 1956 crash between the SS Andrea Doria and the MS Stockholm. In 1958, Private Elvis Presley sailed from Brooklyn Army Base to Germany alongside 1,170 other soldiers in the 3rd Armored Division. By 1963, the Brooklyn Army Terminal employed 1,800 civilians and over 200 military personnel, and another 1,600 people lived at the terminal. At that point, the terminal received of cargo every day from trucking operations, and another daily from rail operations. Closure of military base The United States Department of Defense announced in May 1964 that it was considering closing Brooklyn Army Base, as well as Fort Jay and the Brooklyn Navy Yard, as part of an effort to downsize unnecessary military installations and to save money. Immediately after the announcement, local officials and labor union leaders started advocating to save the military base from closure. Despite advocacy efforts to save the base from closure, Defense Secretary Robert McNamara announced in November 1964 that the Brooklyn Army Terminal would be one of nearly a hundred military bases that would be closed. Only the military function would be decommissioned, and 90 percent of civilian workers at Brooklyn Army Terminal would retain their jobs after the base was closed. By 1965, it was confirmed that the Brooklyn Army Terminal would close to military use on January 1, 1967. Port of Embarkation activities would be relocated