Ships
- IJN Shoho Captain from 1 October 1941, while she was still the tender Tsurugizaki · Renamed Shoho on 22 December 1941 · In command when she was lost, 7 May 1942 · Left on the books until the ship was struck, 20 May 1942
Ishinosuke Izawa (伊沢石之介, also written 伊澤石之介) was an air officer. The published lists give no birth date, no academy class, and no death date. On 15 November 1940 he took the Genzan Naval Air Group, formed that October at Wonsan from the old 15th Air Group. He left it on 1 October 1941.
That day the navy sent him to Yokosuka to take the submarine tender Tsurugizaki. Captain Chozaemon Obata of the battleship Yamashiro had been holding her as an extra duty. She had been laid down on 3 December 1934, launched on 1 June 1935, and completed as a tender on 15 January 1939. Her sister was Takasaki. By 1940 the navy had chosen to finish her as a carrier. The diesel plant came out. Destroyer boilers and turbines went in. A flight deck and a hangar went on. The work took about a year. Izawa inherited her halfway through.
On 22 December 1941 the conversion was accepted. She was reclassified as an aircraft carrier, registered at Yokosuka, and renamed Shoho. Izawa and the old crew stayed aboard. She joined Carrier Division 4. She was a light carrier, with a thin air group. On 4 February 1942 she ferried aircraft to Truk. She stayed in the Carolines until 11 April, then went home to Yokosuka.
In late April she was sent on the Port Moresby operation. She reached Truk on 29 April and sailed with Rear Admiral Aritomo Goto's cruisers, Aoba, Kinugasa, Furutaka, and Kako. On 6 May, south of Bougainville, B-17s from Australia found her. Their bombs missed.
On the morning of 7 May 1942, near Misima, aircraft from Lexington found her at about 10:40. Izawa had a thin combat air patrol up, a handful of Zeros and older Claudes. The cruisers closed around her. He turned into the wind and tried to fly off more fighters. From about 11:10, dive bombers and torpedo planes from Lexington and Yorktown hit her in waves. The counts of hits do not agree. The usual American count is thirteen bombs and seven torpedoes in about twenty-three minutes. Steering and power were gone. At 11:31 he ordered abandon ship. She sank stern first at 11:35. Lieutenant Commander Robert E. Dixon, leading Lexington's dive bombers, sent the message, "Scratch one flat top." The sinking is not credited to one ship. She was the first Japanese carrier lost in the war.
Sazanami was sent back and took the captain off, with part of the crew. How many came up the side is not settled. The usual account is 203 saved. The destroyer's own record says 255. Most of her people did not come up. The navy left Izawa on the books as her captain until 20 May 1942, thirteen days after she had gone down, and then struck the ship.