Ships
- IJN Aoba Captain from 24 February 1943
Kamenosuke Yamamori was born on 1 November 1895. He graduated from the Naval Academy on 24 November 1917, forty-fourth in the 45th class of eighty-nine, and went to sea that day as a midshipman in the armored cruiser Asama. A few months in the old cruiser Aso followed. He completed the basic torpedo course and the basic gunnery course, was commissioned ensign on 1 August 1918, and became a lieutenant junior grade on 1 December 1920. Duty in the light cruisers Oi and Kiso and the destroyer Nara led into the advanced gunnery course. Promoted lieutenant on 1 December 1923, he served in the gunboat Uji, the supply ship Mamiya, and the destroyer Shiokaze.
From December 1926 he taught at the Naval Academy. He returned to sea in the cruiser Iwate, made lieutenant commander on 30 November 1929, and then served in the battleship Nagato. Through the early 1930s he was gunnery officer of the light cruiser Nagara, the heavy cruiser Maya, and the battleships Mutsu and Haruna. He was promoted commander on 15 November 1935, went back to Nagato as gunnery officer, and from December 1937 instructed at the Gunnery School. Captain’s rank came on 15 November 1939, with a posting to the staff of the Combined Fleet. On 20 July 1940 he took command of the minelayer Yaeyama. From 1 November 1940 until 5 May 1942 he commanded the armored cruiser Yakumo. He then became chief instructor at the Yokosuka Gunnery School.
On 24 February 1943 he was appointed captain of the heavy cruiser Aoba. The ship had already left Kure on 15 February for the Eighth Fleet and had anchored at Truk on the 20th, still without the third main-battery turret removed after the damage of Cape Esperance. In the weeks after that battle Tsutau Araki had carried Aoba together with his own command of the heavy cruiser Chikuma, and another captain had her from the end of 1942 until Yamamori’s appointment. Under Yamamori she went on to Rabaul at the beginning of March and then to Kavieng, on New Ireland.
Before dawn on 3 April 1943, while the fleet was preparing the I-Go air offensive, American B-17s bombed Aoba in Moewe Passage at Kavieng. A hit set off a heavy fire, torpedoes exploded, and the cruiser could no longer steam. Thirty-six men were killed and seventy-five wounded. The crew put her aground in the shallows. An early attempt to tow her failed as the flooding grew. The light cruiser Sendai got her moving on 21 April, and the tow reached Truk on 24 April, where the repair ship Akashi worked on the hull. Aoba left Truk on 25 July with the supply ship Irako and the destroyers Amatsukaze and Urakaze, and entered Kure on 1 August. Yard work lasted until 24 November. The third turret was put back, a Type 21 radar and more light anti-aircraft guns were added, and the damaged machinery was left short of a full repair, so her best speed fell to about 28 knots.
On 25 November 1943 Aoba joined the 16th Squadron in the First Southern Expeditionary Fleet. She sailed from Kure on 15 December, called at Manila, and reached Singapore on 24 December. The slower cruiser spent the next months on transport work in the south. On 27 February 1944 she left Singapore as flagship of Rear Admiral Naomasa Sakonjo, with the heavy cruisers Tone and Chikuma, for a raid on Allied shipping in the Indian Ocean. The force dispersed at Jakarta on 15 March. During the cruise Tone sank the British merchant ship Behar, and prisoners taken from that ship were afterwards killed, a killing tried after the war as a war crime. On 23 April Aoba took aboard survivors of the destroyer Amagiri, lost to a mine, and landed them at Tarakan the next day. Yamamori was still her captain when, on 2 June, she sailed from Davao with the light cruiser Kinu and several destroyers in the first attempt to reinforce Biak. A patrol bomber found the group, and the transport ships put into Sorong on 4 June. His command of Aoba ended that day. He was attached to the Yokosuka Naval District, and Chusaburo Yamazumi became captain.
The cruiser’s later damage came after he had left her. In October 1944 the American submarine Bream torpedoed Aoba west of Luzon while she was carrying troops toward the Leyte operation, and she was towed into Manila. Seiroku Murayama held her from 1 January 1945 together with his post as head of the Kure Naval Port Department. American carrier planes wrecked the ship in the raids on Kure, and on 28 July 1945 she settled on the harbor bottom.
Yamamori’s next ship was still fitting out. On 27 June 1944 he became chief equipping officer of the new carrier Amagi at Nagasaki, and on 10 August, the day she commissioned, he became her first captain. Amagi joined Carrier Division 1 and served for a time as flagship for Vice Admiral Jisaburo Ozawa’s mobile force, yet she had no air group ready for a fleet battle and remained in the Inland Sea. Yamamori was promoted rear admiral on 15 October 1944. On 23 October he turned Amagi over to another captain and became chief instructor at the Naval Academy, with supervision of the branch school at Iwakuni. On 20 March 1945 he took command of the Kyushu Air Group, the naval air organization gathered on Kyushu in the last months of the war. He left active service on 10 November 1945. Yamamori died on 25 August 1986.