Yoshino Maru (Kanji:吉野丸) was an 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.