Pacific ships

IJN · Captain

Sone, Akira

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Akira Sone was a captain in the Imperial Japanese Navy whose two wartime cruiser commands fell in the first half of the Pacific War. He became captain of Mogami on 10 September 1941, while Japan was still at peace, and he became captain of Nachi on 16 November 1942. He remained in Nachi until he was relieved on 10 September 1943.

Mogami was the name ship of her class, a fast cruiser rebuilt to carry eight-inch guns and assigned to Cruiser Division 7 with Kumano, Suzuya, and Mikuma. Under Sone she went south with the opening offensive. Through the winter of 1941 and 1942 the division covered landings as Japanese forces advanced down the Malay Peninsula and into the Netherlands East Indies.

Late in February 1942 Mogami was with the ships committed to the invasion of Java. She was at sea for the Battle of the Java Sea on 27 February. On the night of 28 February and 1 March she and Mikuma met the American cruiser Houston and the Australian cruiser Perth in the Sunda Strait, in an action that also drew in Japanese destroyers. Both Allied cruisers were lost in that night fight. Torpedoes running through the same crowded anchorage struck Japanese transports as well.

In April 1942 Mogami went into the Bay of Bengal with the rest of the division and spent days hunting merchant ships. In the first days of June she was in the Midway operation. While the cruisers were turning away from the island, a submarine was sighted, and in the emergency turn Mogami collided with Mikuma. Her bow was crushed. American carrier aircraft then found the damaged pair. Mikuma sank. Mogami, burned and hardly able to steer, survived and eventually reached Japan for a long repair. Sone left her to take up his next command, and Seigo Sasaki followed him in Mogami.

Nachi was a Myoko-class heavy cruiser and the flagship of the Fifth Fleet in northern waters. Sone succeeded Takahiko Kiyota on 16 November 1942. On 26 March 1943 he took her into the Battle of the Komandorski Islands, when the fleet tried to stop an American convoy bound for the Aleutians. Nachi traded salvoes with the heavy cruiser Salt Lake City. An American shell burst in the chart house a few paces from where Sone was standing. The forward turret was knocked out, and men on board were killed and wounded. The Japanese force was the stronger one on paper, yet it broke off the action and the convoy went through. The fleet commander was removed afterward. Sone kept the ship through the rest of the Aleutian campaign.

Shiro Shibuya relieved him on 10 September 1943. On 1 May 1944 Sone was promoted to rear admiral and placed in charge of the First Transportation Corps, moving supplies from Taiwan to the Philippines. In April 1945 he returned to Tokyo as chief of the Meteorological Department. After the surrender, American naval officers interviewed him about the actions he had seen. They found him vigorous for his age, though small details of the fighting sometimes escaped him. In Tokyo he also met Peyton Harrison, who had commanded Salt Lake City, and the two men set the Komandorski battle out again with matchsticks standing for the ships.