Use of the Japanese Carrier Hōshō for Repatriation Duties
The following article was posted on Facebook by the West Texas Wing, Commemorative Air Force (CAF Helldiver Squadron) on 4 October 2026. The article is reproduced on this site with the permission of the author.
On 3 October 1945, the war was over, but for millions of Japanese servicemen and civilians scattered across what had once been the Japanese Empire, getting home was only beginning.
In these photos, American photographers documented the Japanese aircraft carrier Hōshō at Kure as work was underway to transform the veteran carrier for an entirely different mission. Her days of launching aircraft were finished. Instead, her hangar was being converted into living space so she could help bring Japanese personnel home from the Pacific.
The scale of that task was enormous. At the end of the war, approximately 6.6 million Japanese military personnel and civilians were outside the home islands, including roughly three million members of the armed forces. They were spread from China and Korea to Southeast Asia and isolated islands across the Pacific. Ships had to be found, modified and organized to move them back to a defeated Japan whose transportation system and ports were already under tremendous strain.
Hōshō was an especially symbolic choice.
Commissioned in 1922, she was the first ship in the world completed from the keel up as an aircraft carrier. She had helped the Imperial Japanese Navy develop the techniques of carrier aviation during the 1920s and 1930s and was still with the fleet during the Battle of Midway, although by World War II she was largely relegated to training duties.
Now her hangar deck was being fitted with temporary accommodations. Photographs taken at Kure show additional decking and berthing being installed where aircraft had once been maintained.
Just a week later, on 10 October 1945, Hōshō departed Kure with the cruiser Kashima on her first repatriation voyage. Their destination was the Marshall Islands, where Japanese garrisons that had been bypassed during the American advance had spent the final months of the war isolated from Japan.
Hōshō reached Wotje on October 16 and took aboard roughly 700 people. She later called at Jaluit, embarking hundreds more before returning to Japan in early November with more than 1,000 repatriates.
Links
West Texas Wing - Commemorative Air Force, Historical Aircraft Exhibition