Modjokerto was a freighter of the Rotterdamsche Lloyd, named for the town of that name in eastern Java. William Gray and Company built her at Sunderland in 1922, and she was delivered on 20 July as a steamer. In 1933 and 1934 Wilton-Fijenoord in Rotterdam lengthened her, fitted a Maier bow, and made her a motor ship. After that work she measured 7,080 gross tons.
She had been carrying cargo between the Netherlands East Indies and the United States. On 4 February 1942 she reached Tjilatjap, on the south coast of Java. On the evening of 27 February she left with the ships getting out of Java, bound for Colombo.
On the morning of 1 March her radio operator reported an aircraft chasing her, about 330 miles south-southwest of Tjilatjap, near 12°40′ S, 106°40′ E. A later call said a warship was chasing her. The Dutch ship Siantar picked up a last call that included the word sinking.
The record of the destroyer Isokaze says that at 1145 she and Chikuma fired on the freighter and sank her within three minutes. The report of Cruiser Division 8 says Chikuma fired 49 rounds from her 8-inch guns. The sinking is not credited to one of them. Some later accounts name a submarine. Her calls that morning named an aircraft, and then a warship.
Twenty-five of her men, the master among them, have graves on Java. In 1946 a mass grave near Kendari, on Celebes, was opened. Marks of the company identified some of the dead as her crew.