Shields' shakedown cruise, interrupted by a nine-day escort assignment with the battleship USS Iowa, lasted from 7 March to 18 April 1945.

She departed Puget Sound on 6 May and, after several days of operations in the vicinity of Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, shoved off for Eniwetok Atoll with convoy #PD-413-T.

Shields saw actual combat only once during the war; she shelled Japanese shore installations at Miri, Borneo, in support of Australian ground forces, on 26 June 1945.

After a short cruise to Leyte, Subic Bay, and back to Okinawa, she got underway to rendezvous with Task Group 78.1 (TG 78.1) and serve as escort to units of Transport Squadron 17 (Transron 17), at that time ferrying occupation troops to Jinsen, Korea.

The occupation commenced without opposition; and, on 12 September, she steamed out of Jinsen with Task Unit 71.5.1 (TU 71.5.1) bound for the waters off northern China.

During this cruise, which lasted until February 1952, she patrolled the Korean coast in the area of the bombline and Kojo, providing fire support for the First ROK Corps and the First Marine Division.

Later she took part in antisubmarine warfare exercises off the coasts of Japan and Okinawa and concluded the deployment training Chinese Nationalist naval forces at Taiwan.

Shields conducted operations out of Subic Bay during the months of March and April, patrolling the coast of Indochina with Carrier TG 70.2.

One of the highlights of this decade of Shields' career was her participation in the commemoration of the triumphant return of Theodore Roosevelt's "Great White Fleet" to San Francisco.

With her full-time crew cut more than 50%, she spent the next 8 years working with the Development and Training Command to maintain the combat efficiency of reservists.