USS Rutland, one of 117 Haskell-class attack transports, was built to a modified Victory ship design at Vancouver, Washington, and was commissioned in September 1944. After shakedown off the West Coast, she sailed in November for Pearl Harbor where she became flagship of a transport division, loaded Marines, and conducted training. Her division departed Pearl in January, and in February it sailed from Tinian for the invasion of Iwo Jima. Rutland participated in the initial assault there on 19 February and remained off the beaches for the next eight days, unloading troops and cargo and losing eleven of her boats. Retiring to Guam with casualties embarked, she picked up replacement boats at Tulagi in March and then loaded troops at Espiritu Santo to act as a floating reserve for the invasion of Okinawa. Rutland arrived off Okinawa nine days after D-Day, offloading her troops and supplies during the following week. After repairs at Ulithi and Subic Bay, Rutland spent the period from late June to mid-August in the Philippines preparing for the invasion of Japan.

After the Japanese surrender, Rutland was one of the first transports to reach Tokyo Bay, arriving at the beginning of September. Rapidly disembarking her troops, she returned to the Philippines for more occupation forces. Delivering these to Japan in October, she moved to Okinawa where she began the first of two voyages under Operation "Magic Carpet," returning veterans to the West Coast, with a brief repair period at San Francisco in November between the two trips. She was sent to the East Coast in early 1946. Rutland was decommissioned and placed in reserve in February 1947. Retained by the Navy for the next decade as a mobilization asset, she was stricken from the Navy list in October 1958 and transferred to the Maritime Administration in March 1959 for further retention in their reserve fleet. The Maritime Administration sold her for scrapping in June 1982.