You can find a reference to all my Japanese ship camouflage posts at:
https//wstherhorn.wordpress.com/2022/07/12/japanese-ship-camouflage-cross-reference/
When the Japanese Navy realized that the war was not going to end quickly with a negotiated peace, and that the US submarines were sinking ships at a rate that threatened Japan with destruction, they organized convoy routes, built escort vessels, and made standard camouflage patterns to applied to all merchant vessels. I have some data on the convoy system but I’ll only post it at some later date if there is interest expressed by those of you who see this blog. I have posted other aspects of Japanese WW II ship camouflage in other entries on this site.
The camouflage was similar to what the Royal Navy would later adopt as a standard pattern. Ships received a central panel of dark green, and the remainder of the ship was painted in a lighter green shade. The following patterns are for various ships, Navy, Army, and merchant ship authority, The precise shades for this camouflage are not clear to me, so there is a lot of variation in the patterns. If anyone can provide a better color, please let me know.
The patterns here show that the standard camouflage was employed on a wide variety of ships including cargo vessels, passenger ships, railroad ferries, and even hospital ships.
This post almost wraps up my series on Japanese ship camouflage so I decided to include some more items that did not fit in elsewhere. There are more additions in a later post from 2020. Meanwhile, here is a pattern for an aircraft transport, KEIYO MARU
This is a former whale oil factory ship that was converted for use as a tanker. Here is a photograph and a pattern
Since this was originally posted I’ve come across a few more ships in late war green on green camouflage.
Wetherhorn 