On 5 September 1945 the North Carolina finally anchored in Tokyo Bay to pick up a group of about 100 men who had been transferred from her on 20 August, to help with the initial occupation at the Yokosuka Naval Base, near Tokyo.

On 6 September, the ship headed for home via Okinawa (to take on passengers), Hawaii and the Panama Canal. On 17 October, the ship arrived in Boston harbor for a hero's welcome.

Due to post-war disarmament, the battleship's remaining active service was short. In the summer of 1946 she twice visited the Naval Academy at Annapolis to embark midshipmen for training cruises in the Caribbean. In October of that year she returned to the place of her birth, the New York Navy Yard for inactivation. She was decommissioned 27 June 1947, and placed in the "mothballed" Reserve Fleet at Bayonne, New Jersey, where she remained in obscurity for the next 14 years.