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 submarines of the Yu 2001 subclass notably differed from the other Yu I-type submarines in their "repose room,"[1] a deckhouse extending aft of the conning tower which gave the crew more room and greater comfort.

[citation needed] Yu 2002 spent her operational career in Japanese home waters.

[1] Yu 2002 made a round-trip supply voyage from Shimoda to Hachijō-jima in the Philippine Sea sometime during 1945.