Grafton served as an attack transport of the Bayfield class, APA-109, built by Western Pipe and Steel at San Francisco. She was commissioned on 5 January 1945. The commission came late, and the combat work that followed was a single mission.
On 24 June 1945 she reached Okinawa. Passengers went ashore, and she came to anchor off Hagushi. Her boats closed the beach with the people she had carried, and the ship settled in the anchorage off that landing front.
For four nights her guns helped beat off heavy attacks from the air. The anchorage off Hagushi took those attacks after dark, and Grafton was among the ships firing. The nights were an antiaircraft watch piled on top of the landing she had just made.
That Okinawa call, passengers ashore and four nights of air attack, was her one combat mission. She came through it and finished the war.