[4] Van Buren conducted shakedown testing off the US west coast before departing San Pedro, California, on 9 March 1944, bound for the western Pacific.

The next day, Van Buren lobbed 150 rounds of 3-inch (76 mm) and 180 of 40-millimeter (1.6 in) into the Maffin Village sector, with an Army spotting plane providing information on enemy positions.

[4] One week later, during operations in the Philippines, Van Buren went to general quarters when El Paso radioed contact with an unidentified plane closing on their vicinity.

Arriving at Pearl Harbor on 2 January 1945, Van Buren operated as a training ship attached to the U.S. Pacific Fleet's destroyer forces through the spring of 1945.

Assigned to Commander, Western Sea Frontier, Van Buren was fitted out as a weather ship and served in that capacity through the end of hostilities with Japan and into the year 1946.

Decommissioned there on 6 May 1946, Van Buren was struck from the Navy List on 19 June 1946, and sold soon thereafter to the Sun Shipbuilding and Drydock Company of Chester, Pennsylvania, for scrapping.