USS Rawlins, one of 117 Haskell-class attack transports, was built to a modified Victory ship design at Vancouver, Washington, and was commissioned in November 1944. After shakedown, she sailed from San Francisco in January 1945 to deliver cargo and replacement troops to New Caledonia. In February she joined forces training near Guadalcanal for the invasion of Okinawa. Rawlins sortied from Ulithi in late March with the assault force and arrived off the island on D-Day at the beginning of April. After five days off Okinawa the ship retired first to Saipan and then to San Francisco. She returned to Okinawa in July with reinforcements, and in early August carried fresh troops to the Philippines from the West Coast.

After the Japanese surrender, Rawlins ferried occupation troops to Japan. Between late October 1945 and July 1946 she participated in Operation "Magic Carpet", returning veterans from the western Pacific to the West Coast and to Pearl Harbor. In August 1946 she arrived at Norfolk for inactivation. Rawlins was decommissioned and placed in reserve in November 1946. Retained on the Navy list for the next decade as a mobilization asset, she was transferred to the Maritime Administration in September 1958 for further retention and stricken from the Navy list in October. The Maritime Administration sold her for scrapping in August 1987.