Constructed for use during the latter stages of World War II, she served in the waters of the Japanese archipelago.

In the final two years of World War II, the Imperial Japanese Army constructed transport submarines — officially the Type 3 submergence transport vehicle and known to the Japanese Army as the Maru Yu — with which to supply its isolated island garrisons in the Pacific.

The Yu I type was produced in four subclasses, each produced by a different manufacturer and differing primarily in the design of their conning towers and details of their gun armament, although one source[1] states that the Yu 1001 subclass differed from the original Yu 1 sublcass in other ways, being longer, having a slightly larger displacement and more powerful diesel engine that increased the maximum speed by 2 knots (3.7 km/h; 2.3 mph), and probably having no deck gun installed.

[1] In January 1945, several Type I transport submarines were sent to operate from Shimoda on the southern tip of the Izu Peninsula in Shizuoka Prefecture on Honshu,[1] and the submarines began transport missions from Shimoda in March 1945.

[1] Assigned to Detachment 2, Transport Submarine Group, on 11 February 1945,[1] Yu 1002 made a round-trip supply voyage from Shimoda to Hachijō-jima in the Philippine Sea sometime during 1945.