Residual stress remarkably affects the fatigue strength of welded socket joint. In carbon and austenitic stainless steel the fatigue strength of socket welded joint is about half of base metal. This is caused by the high tensile residual stress at the root of socked weld. In this study the variation of residual stress distribution near the weld start and end points, effects of miss-alignment on the residual stress distribution and the principal strain and stress were examined using the neutron diffraction method. As a result, the effects of miss-alignment are negligibly small and the residual stress at the weld root is almost the same with that of normally welded joint. The deviations of principal axes from the specimen directions are not so much large and the principal stresses almost agree with those of specimen axes.