Constructed for use during World War II, she served in the waters of the Japanese archipelago and was lost in a storm in 1945.

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.

[4] Yu 3002 spent her operational career in Japanese home waters.

[4] Surviving records of the activities of Imperial Japanese Army submarines are fragmentary,[2][5] and no records have been discovered describing her specific activities in support of any particular operation.