Name Kleist
Yoshino Maru Out of service 31 July 1944 Beam 17.5 m Length 141 m Builder Schichau-Werke | In service 1907-1944 Type Ocean liner Launched 1907 Tonnage 8.119 million kg | |
Fate Torpedoed and sunk 31 July 1944 | ||
Yoshino Maru was a 8,950-ton Japanese troop transport during World War II, which sank on 31 July 1944 with great loss of life.
Yoshino Maru was built in 1907 as Kleist for the Norddeutscher Lloyd by the Schichau-Werke in Danzig, Germany. In 1919, she was ceded to the United Kingdom as war reparation, who sold her in 1921 to the Japanese government, where she was renamed Yoshino Maru. In 1929, she was sold to Kinkai Yusen and used as an ocean liner. At the start of the Second Sino-Japanese War, she was requisitioned as a transport ship by the Imperial Japanese Navy.
On 31 July 1944, she was travelling in Convoy MI-11 from Moji, Japan, to Miri, Borneo, with 5,063 soldiers on board, when the convoy was attacked by a United States Navy submarine wolfpack. At 3:40 AM, USS Parche (SS-384) torpedoed and sank Yoshino Maru with four torpedoes; losses aboard ship included 2,442 soldiers, as well as 18 gunners, 35 crewmen, and 400 cubic meters (14,120 cubic feet) of ammunition.