Aoshima 1/700 Kasuga Maru

Built by Mitsubishi Shipbuilding & Engineering Co. at Nagasaki. Laid down 1938. Completed 1939. Launched September 19, 1940. Commissioned as Kasuga Maru 春日丸 named after Kasuga-taisha, the Shinto Shrine in Nara. Purchased by Nippon Yusen Kaisha and used as a passenger ocean liner as a sister ship to the Yawata Maru and Nitta Maru. On November 1, 1940, when Musashi was launched, Kasuga Maru was towed alongside to block her silhouette from any foreign observers.

On February 10, 1941, the Kasuga Maru was requisitioned by the Imperial Japanese Navy (IJN) to transport military stores and personnel. Between February until March 31, 1941 steamed to Yokosuka, Tokyo, Chichi-Jima Island, Saipan, Formosa, Truk, Ponape, and Fais.

During April 1941, the Navy decided to convert her to an escort carrier. On May 1, 1941 arrives at Sasebo for conversion, completed September 2, 1941. Her flight deck measured 490' x 75' and equipped with two elevators. With no island, catapults or arresting gear it is classified as an auxiliary carrier. On August 31, 1942, renamed Taiyō 大鷹 and reclassified as a warship used primarily for flight training and aircraft transport.

As with many US escort carriers, the Taiyo was used to transport aircraft and equipment to various Japanese bases. Though torpedoed by several submarines, none were sufficient to sink her until August 1944 when torpedoed by the USS Rasher off Cape Bolinao, Luzon. That set off its store of Avgas causing tremendous explosions. The ship sank in 27 minutes with great loss of life.

I got back into modeling in 1973 when stationed at NAS Atsugi. There was a little shop in a nearby town of Yamato that was packed to the gills with model kits. At the time, I was drawn to the 1/700 ship collection for a couple of reasons. One is that they had ton of them and other is that thanks to the excellent dollar to yen exchange rate (at the time around 300yen to the dollar), my pittance of a paycheck could buy a bunch of these, especially as the destroyers were less than a dollar each.

At the time, my knowledge of kit quality was almost non-existent and this was especially true of Japanese kit companies as one simply didn't get much in the way of Japanese kits in the early 1960s when I was building a lot of car kits. I soon learned that there was a hierarchy of the four companies involved in the waterline ship business. The best was Tamiya, followed by Hasegawa, Fujimi, and Aoshima. Of course that is no longer the case as all four companies now produce superb kits.

This kit is identical to the Yawata Maru previewed last month. The only difference is the ship's name. As with the previous kit, this one did not come with instructions, but those are easily found by doing a web search.

The kit is molded in white with the flat waterline plate and the nameplate in red. There is also a large weight for the waterline section. The upper hull is a single piece with two sprues that contain the rest of the superstructure along with the various cargo cranes and the life boats with their davits.

Probably the most difficult part of the build will be painting the decks as portions of the deck also include some superstructure bits. I'm thinking that a lot of prepainting will be needed, unlike most of the combat ships which are often an overall dark grey. What may well be an issue are the decals which are quite old and may not be viable. I guess only time will tell as getting replacements will be difficult at best.

This kit has been reissued at least half a dozen times so if you see one and like ships, it might be worth the effort.  

https://pacificwrecks.com/ship/ijn/taiyo.html

April 2025

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