After destroying a floating mine on 19 August, Bowers searched the area around Bougainville and Treasury Island for a submarine reported to be in the vicinity.

Her duties in the northern Solomons ended at Biak, New Guinea, where she joined a group of fleet oilers bound for the Philippines to support the American landing on Leyte.

On 28 October, Bowers rescued the pilot of an aircraft that missed the flight deck of the escort carrier USS Kadashan Bay.

The destroyer escort stood out of Ulithi on 23 January 1945, bound for Seeadler Harbor, where she served as a part of an anti-submarine screen operating in the ocean approaches to the Caroline and Marshall Islands.

Bowers entered the transport anchorage off the Hagushi beaches at Okinawa during the morning of 1 April and, just after nightfall, fought off the first of many attacks by enemy planes.

On 3 April, Bowers was assigned to a radar picket station about 10 miles (16 km) north of Kerama Retto to provide the other ships around Okinawa with an early warning of approaching air attacks.

That day, a single torpedo bomber attacked Bowers and USS Gendreau, but the latter escort shot down the offending plane before it could do any damage.

Fire fighting parties brought the flames under control in about 45 minutes; but 37 men from the ship were killed, 11 were reported missing, and many of the 56 wounded died later.

She arrived at San Diego on 24 May and was ordered on to the Philadelphia Naval Shipyard for conversion to a Charles Lawrence-class high speed transport.

She returned to Philadelphia on 25 October for the Navy Day celebration and then steamed to Green Cove Springs, Florida, where she languished in limbo for more than a year before being decommissioned on 10 February 1947.

The Navy helped the Philippines to raise the warship and tow her to Subic Bay's Ship Repair Facility for final disposition.