After visits to Acapulco, Mexico; San Diego, California; and Portland, Oregon, ATA-192 arrived in Pearl Harbor, Territory of Hawaii, on 28 April 1945.

Early in August 1945, she headed eastward and proceeded via Ulithi Atoll and Pearl Harbor to the United States West Coast.

After almost a month in port at San Francisco, ATA—192 got underway for Pearl Harbor, bound for the atomic bomb tests at Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands.

After a five-day stopover at Pearl Harbor, she reached San Francisco on 12 October 1946 and began the procedure for her post-test radiation contamination clearance.

After stops at Bremerton and Seattle, Washington, she arrived at Kodiak, Territory of Alaska, on 1 January 1946 to begin an extended tour of duty in the 17th Naval District.

In February 1947, she underwent repairs at Puget Sound Naval Shipyard in Bremerton, and, early in March 1947, she returned to Alaskan waters.

In addition to the usual towing operations she performed, Tillamook also conducted search and rescue missions in the cold and treacherous waters of the Bering Sea, as well as humanitarian work for Native Alaskans.

In November 1960, Tillamook was reassigned again, this time to East Asian waters guarded by the United States Seventh Fleet.

During her first four years in the western Pacific, Tillamook performed towing operations between such bases as Sasebo and Yokosuka, Japan, and Subic Bay on Luzon in the Philippines.

However, her missions in Vietnamese waters in 1964 were brief port visits to deliver tows at such places as Da Nang and Vung Tau, South Vietnam.

Shortly after the Gulf of Tonkin incident in August 1964, the US Navy developed a training exercise to simulate firing on small, high-speed targets at night and Tillamook was assigned to participate off Subic Bay.

Although the salvos missed, shrapnel hit the side of Tillamook, and the crew collected them in a box and gave them to the destroyer as a present the following day while delivering the mail to the fleet.

In February 1965, she assisted the disabled United States Coast Guard Cutter USCGC Chautauqua into Yokosuka for repairs.

Chatauqua was at Ocean Station Victor, approximately 1100 miles east of Yokosuka and was adrift, having lost its main bearing.

The call came in around 22:00 one evening, and she got underway immediately to rendezvous with the merchant ship SS Enid Victory, which was unable to return to port because of a damaged engine.