"Hamilton" reached Pearl Harbor via Eniwetok on 25 March 1945 and, after a brief period of training, headed back to the continental United States. As she sailed under the Golden Gate Bridge on 8 April, the destroyer ended over 100,000 miles of steaming in the Pacific. Scheduled for overhaul and modernization, she went into drydock at Richmond, California; but she was subsequently reclassified AG-111 (miscellaneous auxiliary) on 6 May 1945 and taken out of dry dock. The ship spent the few remaining months of the war participating in experimental minesweeping work along the California coast out of Santa Barbara. Two weeks before the Japanese surrender, "Hamilton" sailed to the destroyer base at San Diego, where she was decommissioned on 16 October 1945. Her hulk was sold to Hugo Neu of New York City for scrapping on 21 November 1946.