Junyô was considered a “lucky” ship because it actually survived hostilities, unlike virtually all of its contemporaries. Torpedoed near Nagasaki at the end of 1944, Junyô spent the rest of the war in Sasebo. The ship was originally to have become an ocean liner — evident by the shape of the hull — but before it was completed the Imperial Navy took it in 1940 for conversion to an aircraft carrier, the first to have the funnel in the superstructure rather than pointing down and away from the sides, incidentally. It was in active service from May, 1942 onward. The boxes on either side of the bow are AA rocket launchers, added in July, 1944. ¹

Junyo. Warships of the Imperial Japanese Navy, 1869-1945. (P. 53)

¹Jentschura, Hansgeorg, Dieter Jung, and Peter Mickel. Antony Preston, J.D. Brown, Tr. Warships of the Imperial Japanese Navy, 1869-1945. Annapolis: Naval Institute Press, 1977. (Pp. 52-53.)