The torpedoes and heavy gunfire of the Japanese vessels took a devastating toll on the American destroyers and shortly after midnight, Fraser gave the order to abandon the Walke.

After five days of intensive exercises off San Clemente Island, Thomas E. Fraser departed the California coast, steaming in company with Shannon and Harry F. Bauer.

Thomas E. Fraser devoted the last days of 1944 and most of January 1945 to intensive exercises in the Hawaiian Islands to prepare for her role in the forthcoming assault on Iwo Jima.

Two hours before dawn on D-day, 19 February, the ship left the convoy screen to make an antisubmarine sweep through the transport area off the southern beaches of Iwo Jima.

Early on the morning of 21 February, as Thomas E. Fraser was firing on the northeast base of Mount Suribachi, a near miss by a large shell of undetermined origin caused a hole in her starboard side just below the main deck.

During a dusk air raid alert on 23 February, Thomas E. Fraser opened fire on a Japanese airplane as it passed down the port side of the ship, but the raider disappeared, apparently unharmed.

Thomas E. Fraser remained off Iwo Jima through the first week in March, providing screening for the transports and fire support for the marines fighting ashore.

Before dawn on 25 March, the minesweepers began sweep operations — part of the large scale American efforts to prepare the waters of the Nansei Shoto for the planned assaults on Kerama Retto and Okinawa.

The destroyer minelayer did not retire with the minesweeping group that evening but took up a patrol station off Okinawa and, throughout the night, fired illumination and harassment rounds on the island's southern beaches.

In the early hours of 29 March, Thomas E. Fraser fired on an attacking Mitsubishi G4M "Betty" bomber, bringing the Japanese plane down in flames.

At 03:20, a low flying floatplane appeared without warning, dropped a bomb which exploded just off Thomas E. Fraser's port quarter, and disappeared into the night before the ship could fire a single shot.

The DM continued her support and direction of the minesweeping group until the completion of its assigned sweeps later that day, then took up her station off Kerama Retto as an anchorage screening vessel.

Following the installation of a new radar antenna, Thomas E. Fraser moved to Saipan on 18 April and, two days later, headed back toward the Ryukyus with a convoy of tank landing ships.

On 28 April, a Japanese plane dove in low from the direction of the island, launched a torpedo which missed the ship, and escaped despite heavy antiaircraft fire.

Steaming on her starboard screw while her port engine was being repaired, the warship left Apra Harbor on 4 May and arrived off Okinawa on 7 May to resume screening and radar picket duties.

While operating in the transport screen off Hagushi Beach on 12 May, she helped to fight off a swarm of Japanese kamikazes during the raid in which one crashed into the battleship USS New Mexico.

On 6 June, Thomas E. Fraser relieved USS J. William Ditter, the badly battered target of a mass kamikaze attack, on picket station.

Toward sunset on 21 June, as she lay at anchor in Kerama Retto, Thomas E. Fraser took under fire an enemy plane which had penetrated the screen and had dropped a bomb on the forecastle of nearby USS Curtiss.

Into August, Thomas E. Fraser operated out of Buckner Bay, Okinawa, planting buoys to guide mine sweeping units clearing the East China Sea.

She ended August supporting minesweepers clearing the Okinoyama minefield and was in Tokyo Bay on 2 September when the peace was signed on board USS Missouri.

In September, the minelayer operated with sweep units clearing mines in Kii Suido, in Wakayama anchorage, and off the Pacific coast of the Japanese islands.

On the last day of June, she departed Hampton Roads; steamed to Recife, Brazil; then proceeded on to the African port of Monrovia for a courtesy and good-will visit during Liberia's centennial celebration.