Zellars and 47 others were asphyxiated almost immediately, but not before he turned on the flood valve that extinguished a burning powder train, an act that likely saved the ship and many of his shipmates from destruction.

After six weeks of shakedown training out of San Diego, California, Zellars returned north to Bremerton, Washington, for post-shakedown availability.

For the next week, she worked with the battleships and cruisers of TF 54, first in supporting the occupation of the roadstead at Kerama Retto and then in subjecting Okinawa itself to a systematic, long-duration, preinvasion bombardment.

Because most of the targets on Okinawa were located well inland in accordance with Japan's relatively new strategy of defense in depth, Zellars' 5-inch guns usually deferred to the larger caliber batteries on board the battleships and cruisers while she provided them with antisubmarine and antiaircraft protection.

After the 1 April amphibious assault of Okinawa, she continued to screen the larger ships of TG 54.3 and provided call fire in support of the troops ashore.

The Japanese pilot, however, pressed home his attack and crashed into Zellar's port side, forward of the bridge in her number 2 handling room.

Zellars conducted refresher training out of San Diego in September, transited the Panama Canal on 8 October, and entered the New York Naval Shipyard on the 16th.

Upon her return to the United States, the warship received orders directing her to escort the carrier Franklin D. Roosevelt on her shakedown voyage during January and February 1946.

Following routine repairs and post-availability shakedown at Casco Bay, Maine, the destroyer reported for duty with the Submarine Force, Atlantic Fleet, on 4 October.

She visited Soudha Bay at Crete; Taranto, Naples, Venice, Salerno, and Trieste in Italy; and Tangiers on the North African coast.

During that time, her primary missions were gunfire support for United Nations troops ashore and coastal surveillance as well as antisubmarine protection for the larger American warships against an underwater threat that never materialized.

In mid-December, the warship moved north from Wonsan to Hŭngnam to provide gunfire support during the evacuation of another coastal enclave held by retreating United Nations forces.

She remained in Korean waters for another six months after the November–December evacuations and ranged both coasts of Korea delivering gunfire in support of the ground troops and interdicting coastal logistics.

Over the next eight years, training in ASW tactics was emphasized on five extended cruises to European and Mediterranean waters and in exercises in the western Atlantic and in the Caribbean Sea.

Late in 1959, Zellars entered the Norfolk Naval Shipyard and began Mark II Fleet Rehabilitation and Modernization (FRAM) overhaul and alterations.

In 1966, she remained in the western Atlantic for the entire year, breaking her training routine between mid-May and mid-September for regular overhaul at the Boston Naval Shipyard.

That deployment, consisting of the usual unilateral and multinational training exercises and goodwill port visits, lasted until 27 September when she tied up at Newport once again.