[1] On her arrival in Buenos Aires after only 13.5 days, she was advertised as the largest, fastest, and most luxurious ocean liner in service between Europe and South America.

Cap Finisterre was ear-marked by the Imperial German Navy for conversion as an auxiliary cruiser;[2] however she was not requisitioned and remained at Hamburg for the duration of the war due to the Allied blockade.

Japanese Prime Minister Takahashi Korekiyo finally called upon Asano Sōichirō, founder of Tōyō Kisen (Oriental Steamship Company) to accept the ship, and to place it on the company’s trans-Pacific route between Hong Kong, Shanghai, Kobe, Yokohama, Honolulu, San Francisco and Los Angeles.

He also sponsored a cruise from Yokohama to Hong Kong, on which he invited numerous luminaries from the business and political world (including Yasuda Zenjirō) to publicise vessel and its luxurious fittings.

Shortly after this, NYK faced issues on routes to North America due to the Great Depression and increasing restrictions by the American government on immigration to California.

Langston Hughes was a passenger on Taiyō Maru on his way back to the United States after his 1932 visit to the Soviet Union, China and Korea.

Her first and only assignment was to transport 34 soldiers and 1,010 civilians, including military governors, doctors, bureaucracy staff, educators and technicians needed to administer conquered Southeast Asian regions.

The passengers included a large number of oil-field technicians bound for the Palembang, Sumatra and to revive oil refining facilities at Miri in Sarawak and Balikpapan, Borneo, as well as technicians for Malaya and for Java to install new equipment in the aluminum refinery facility and to construct a cement factory at Davao, Philippines.

Captain Keisuke Harada and about a dozen crewmen decided to go down with the ship, which sank at 20:40 hours approximately 170 km (110 mi) southwest of Me-shima in the Danjo Islands.

In August 2018 the wreck of Taiyō Maru was discovered by divers of the Society La Plongée for Deep Sea Technology, lying on her port side and reportedly largely undamaged except for the bow.