Civilian career
Tatsuta Maru undertook her maiden voyage on 15 March 1930,[7] sailing from Yokohama to San Francisco,[4] and subsequently commenced regularly scheduled trans-Pacific services via Honolulu. In October 1931, she carried members of the American Major League Baseball teams, including Lou Gehrig to Japan for a Japanese-American exhibition tournament.[9] On 12 November 1936, she became the first civilian vessel to pass under the San Francisco–Oakland Bay Bridge, the longest in the world at the time.[10]
In 1938, the transliteration of her name was official changed to Tatuta Maru,[11] in line with new Japanese regulations on the Romanization of Japanese.
In January 1940, Tatsuta Maru was scheduled to carry 512 seamen from the German transport SS Columbus, who had been interned in the United States after they scuttled their ship rather than to have it fall into the hands of the British. However, due to political pressure applied on the American government, they were not allowed to board. In June of the same year, she arrived in San Francisco with 40 Jewish refugees from Russia, Austria, Germany, and Norway who had managed to reach Japan overland via Siberia.
In San Francisco on 20 March 1941, Tatsuta Maru disembarked Colonel Hideo Iwakuro dispatched by Prime Minister Hideki Tojo to assist Ambassador Admiral Kichisaburo Nomura in his negotiations with the United States. On 26 July, President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed an executive order to seize Japanese assets in the United States in retaliation for the Japanese invasion of French Indochina. Tatsuta Maru was in San Francisco at the time, and American authorities confiscated a shipment of over nine million dollars in bonds by the Yokohama Specie Bank. On 30 July, the American government granted Tatsuta Maru a license to purchase enough fuel oil for the voyage back to Japan. This was last official oil export from the United States to Japan before the start of World War II.[10] On the return voyage to Japan, the ship was struck with a case of food poisoning in which 125 passengers were affected, of which eight died. One of the stricken passengers was Susumu Nikaido, the post-war vice-president of the LDP. The incident was the subject of an essay by Yuriko Miyamoto.
On 30 August, Tatsuta Maru transported 349 Polish Jewish refugees who had arrived in Japan via Siberia from Kobe to Shanghai, where they were received by the Shanghai Ghetto. On 15 October, under contract to the Japanese government, she was temporarily designated a diplomatic exchange vessel, and was used in the repatriation of 608 Allied nationals to the United States. Travelling under total radio silence, she arrived at San Francisco on 30 October, and after embarking 860 Japanese nationals, returned to Yokohama via Honolulu on 14 November. This was the last civilian passenger voyage between Japan and the United States before World War II.[10] She departed Yokohama on 2 December, ostensibly on a second repatriation voyage to bring Japanese back from Mexico; however, the voyage was a hoax, and on 6 December, the captain opened sealed orders which instructed him to reverse course.[12] Shortly after returning to Yokohama, she is requisitioned by the Imperial Japanese Navy.[10]
