Ships
- IJN Myoko Captain from 22 March 1945
Hokao Kagayama was a captain in the Imperial Japanese Navy. On 22 March 1945 he took command of the heavy cruiser Myoko at Singapore, and he remained her captain until the ship was turned over to the Royal Navy on 21 September 1945.
The cruiser he joined had already been driven out of the mobile fleet. During the fighting off Leyte a torpedo flooded machinery and cut her speed, and she reached Singapore on 3 November 1944 for temporary repair. On 12 December she sailed for Japan and was intercepted off Indochina by the American submarine Bergall. A torpedo hit the port quarter, fire broke out, and the engines stopped. The crew had the fire out by 15 December, and a tow began that day. On 17 December, in heavy weather, the stern broke away. Myoko entered Singapore on Christmas Day. The dockyard could not rebuild her, a tow to Japan was out of reach, and she was kept with the damaged heavy cruiser Takao as a moored anti-aircraft battery off Seletar Naval Base in the Johore Strait.
That last voyage home fell under Itsu Ishihara, who had been captain since December 1943. Sutejiro Onoda relieved him on 15 January 1945. On 1 February, B-29s bombed the harbor and near misses landed astern of Myoko, after which she went into dry dock. Kagayama succeeded Onoda on 22 March. On 11 April the ship returned to dry dock for four days, then went back to the Seletar anchorage. Earlier in the war the same command had been held by Teijiro Yamazumi, Teruhiko Miyoshi, and Katsuhei Nakamura.
For the rest of his appointment Myoko stayed in the strait. After British forces took Rangoon, Allied planners treated the main guns of Myoko and Takao as a standing threat to any crossing of the Johore Causeway into Singapore. On 31 July 1945 the midget submarine XE-1 was sent into the strait to place a charge under Myoko. The boat could not get into position beneath her, and the attack was carried through against Takao. Myoko remained at her berth.
At the surrender she still had anti-aircraft ammunition aboard and no shells for the main battery. On 21 September 1945 she was formally surrendered to the Royal Navy, and Kagayama’s command ended with that transfer. On 25 September Captain Manley L. Power of the Royal Navy came aboard, crossing from a German U-boat tied up alongside, and Japanese officers walked his party through the ship. The after end was open wreckage. Myoko remained at Singapore until July 1946, when she was towed into the Strait of Malacca and scuttled off Port Swettenham. Kagayama’s command is that last half-year, from a crippled cruiser used as a fixed gun platform to the day she passed into British hands.