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.

[3][4] Yu 1007 spent her operational career in Japanese home waters.

[citation needed] Surviving records of the activities of Imperial Japanese Army submarines are fragmentary,[4][5] and no records have been discovered describing her specific activities in support of any particular operation.