Returning to the United States in the autumn of 1940, he served successive tours of duty at the Marine barracks at Mare Island, Vallejo, California; the Naval Air Station, Lakehurst, New Jersey; Quantico, Virginia and New River, North Carolina.

After she conducted her shakedown out of Great Sound Bay, Bermuda, Walton underwent post-shakedown availability at the Boston Navy Yard.

Informed that those sea lanes had been, of late, patrolled by Japanese submarines and that enemy planes might be encountered, Walton and her fellow escorts alertly screened the important convoy bound for the Allies' westernmost outpost.

In May, Walton visited Manila, Leyte, and Hollandia, before CortDiv 85 received orders to sail for Subic Bay to relieve another division of destroyer escorts that had been conducting antisubmarine sweeps along the west coast of Luzon.

Those patrols had been instituted primarily to interdict the flow of enemy submarines from bases in China, Formosa, or the Japanese home islands themselves.

During the course of those ensuing duties, Walton escorted USS Brill to Cape Calavite, Mindoro, where the fleet submarine torpedoed a beached and abandoned Japanese tanker.

They swept northeast of Luzon and across the convoy lane between Leyte and Okinawa, without success, before Walton was relieved by USS Johnnie Hutchins off Aparri.

Arriving at Jinsen on 8 September, Mercy soon commenced taking care of the many Allied prisoners of war and internees from a camp near the Korean port.

Walton consequently found employment as a river pilot ship, leading vessels which did not have adequate anchorage or area charts – a necessary precaution due to the many narrow and shallow passages in the waters off Jinsen.

On 26 September, while engaged in that duty, Walton suffered damage when an LCT – under tow by USS LST-557 – collided with her port bow, opening a large hole and breaking several frames above the waterline.

There, the two destroyer escorts embarked passengers – taking part in a phase of the Operation "Magic Carpet", the return home of discharge-bound veterans.

In July, she made a passage to Beppu, Japan, for a period of repairs alongside a tender, before she operated as a screening vessel with Task Force 77.

Walton departed Hong Kong on 8 November and proceeded back to Pearl Harbor, via the Philippines, Guam and Midway, having to dodge two more typhoons (Ruby and Sally) while en route.

The destroyer escort then spent the period from late November 1954 to early May 1955 in the Hawaiian Islands, training and undergoing needed upkeep.

In June and July, Walton alternated making surveillance voyages to the places mentioned above with performing duties as search and rescue (SAR) ship operating out of Guam.

During the latter part of July, Walton visited the northern Marianas, the Bonin and Volcano Islands and Yokosuka, before she resumed SAR duties at Guam.

During the fifth deployment, the ship visited Singapore, the Federated Malay States; Hong Kong; Kobe, Japan; the Marianas; and Chinhae, Korea; where she, in company with USS Bream and units of the ROK Navy, trained in antisubmarine warfare.

Later, while en route from Japanese waters to Keelung, Taiwan, in company with USS Foss, Walton conducted an unsuccessful search for an American plane that had ditched in the ocean.

Also – in company with her sister ship USS McGinty – she visited Townsville, Australia – via Subic Bay and Manus – arriving "down under" on 19 August 1957.

During the many two-week reserve cruises she conducted a variety of operations including "live" antisubmarine warfare training and gunnery exercises, highline transfers, general quarters drills, and underway refuelings in order to bring reservists up to date on latest methods and equipment.

With her selected reserve crew of 70 men the destroyer escort was recalled to active duty as part of the overall buildup of military force ordered by President John F. Kennedy to meet the communist threat in Berlin and, possibly, elsewhere.

After further underway training evolutions in Hawaiian waters, Walton departed Pearl Harbor on 22 January 1962, bound for the Marianas, on the first leg of her seventh WestPac deployment.

Walton arrived off Da Nang on 17 February and immediately began patrols in company with units of the small South Vietnamese Navy.

Returning to Subic Bay briefly toward the middle of March, and after visiting Manila and Hong Kong, the destroyer escort resumed patrols off the coastline of South Vietnam, operating from Da Nang.