Ships
- IJN Chokai Captain from 6 June 1944
Jo Tanaka was a captain of the Imperial Japanese Navy. He was born on 28 October 1898 and passed out of the Naval Academy in its 47th class, fortieth among 115 graduates. Gunnery school, torpedo school, and the Naval Staff College filled out his early training, and his service moved between the fleet and shore staff.
In December 1931 he joined the battleship Mutsu as torpedo officer. The next month he took command of the destroyer Fuyo. During the China war he held liaison and staff posts, including duty at Nanjing, and in the early 1940s he worked with the Navy Ministry, the Asia Development Board, and the Greater East Asia Ministry. On 21 November 1943 he returned to sea as captain of the light cruiser Kitakami.
On 6 June 1944, in the anchorage at Tawi-Tawi, Tanaka became captain of the heavy cruiser Chokai. He relieved Kosaku Aruga, who had fallen seriously ill with a tropical fever. Chokai was a Takao-class ship, completed in 1932, with ten eight-inch guns and a large torpedo battery. In August 1942 she had flown the flag of Gunichi Mikawa at the Battle of Savo Island. Continuous employment after that had left her short of the fuller refits given to other ships of the class. Tanaka came aboard as the fleet prepared to meet the American advance into the Mariana Islands.
Within days the order for Operation A-Go arrived. Chokai sailed with the cruisers attached to Vice Admiral Takeo Kurita’s part of the First Mobile Fleet. In the Battle of the Philippine Sea, on 19 and 20 June 1944, the decisive fighting was in the air, and Tanaka’s cruiser came through. The heavy ships then gathered again in the south, using the Lingga roads below Singapore while the navy waited for the next landing.
In October the force left Brunei Bay to strike the ships supporting the landings on Leyte, and Chokai went with Kurita’s Center Force. On 23 October, in the Palawan Passage, American submarines sank the heavy cruisers Atago and Maya and damaged Takao so badly that she turned back. Chokai came through that attack with her fighting power intact and was placed with Cruiser Division 5 for the rest of the advance. On 24 October, in the Sibuyan Sea, carrier aircraft attacked through the day and sank the battleship Musashi. Chokai stayed with the force and continued east.
At dawn on 25 October the Center Force met the escort carriers and their screen off Samar. Chokai opened with her main battery as the Japanese ships closed. Gunfire struck her amidships on the port side, an explosion followed, and she lost the power to keep station. A bomb from a torpedo plane of the escort carrier Kitkun Bay then hit the forward engine room and set her burning. Her men abandoned her. The destroyer Fujinami took off the survivors, Tanaka among them, and scuttled the cruiser with torpedoes later that day.
Fujinami did not reach port. On 27 October, in waters north of Iloilo, aircraft from the carrier Essex sank her, and everyone still aboard was lost, including the men who had come off Chokai. Tanaka’s command, begun on 6 June, ended with the cruiser on 25 October, and he died with the destroyer two days afterward. The Navy removed Chokai from the list on 20 December 1944.