Ships
- IJN Yamashiro Captain from 6 May 1944 · In command when she was lost, 25 October 1944
Katsukiyo Shinoda was born in Fukuoka Prefecture on 27 May 1895. He went from Fukuoka Prefectural Shuyukan Middle School into the Naval Academy with the 44th class and graduated on 22 November 1916, twenty-second in a class of ninety-five. The navy made him an ensign on 1 December 1917, a lieutenant junior grade on 1 December 1919, and a lieutenant on 1 December 1922. His specialty was torpedoes, and his first commands were destroyers.
He took the destroyer Hishi on 1 February 1928. From December 1930 he served on the staff of the Yokosuka Naval District, then commanded Nokaze from May 1933 and Mikazuki from November of that year. Promotion to commander came on 15 November 1934, with staff duty at the Chinkai Guard District and at the fortress commands of Chinkai Bay and Tsushima. In November 1935 he joined the staff of the 5th Destroyer Squadron. On 6 July 1937, as the fighting in China widened, he became captain of the destroyer Akatsuki.
On 15 November 1939 Shinoda was promoted to captain and given Destroyer Division 30. He moved to Destroyer Division 9 on 1 November 1940. His first cruiser was the light cruiser Nagara, which he joined on 17 December 1942 in succession to Yoshioki Tawara. Working from Truk in the early months of 1943, she took minor superstructure damage from an accidental shell burst during gunnery practice off Saipan, then joined the February evacuation of Guadalcanal. On 9 April she took aboard 137 survivors of the transport Kosei Maru after an American submarine had torpedoed that ship and it sank under tow. In June she carried a special naval landing force to Nauru. In July, while screening the carrier Junyo toward New Guinea, she set off a mine laid by an Australian flying boat and suffered light damage aft. He left Nagara on 16 August 1943.
On 29 August 1943 he assumed command of the new light cruiser Oyodo. She had been built as a flagship for submarine squadrons, with a large hangar and extensive radio spaces, and the fleet was already turning those spaces to other uses. In October she sortied with the Combined Fleet toward the Marshalls after American carriers struck Wake, and on 24 October her men recovered the three-man crew of a reconnaissance plane. At Truk on 6 December Vice Admiral Jisaburo Ozawa hoisted his flag in her as commander of the Third Fleet. At the end of December she ran troops to Kavieng, where aircraft from the carrier Bunker Hill hit her, killing two men and wounding six. She then escorted the damaged transport Kiyosumi Maru back toward Truk with seventy-one wounded sailors aboard. From March 1944 the Yokosuka Navy Yard rebuilt her as a headquarters ship for the Combined Fleet, and late in April Admiral Soemu Toyoda flew his flag in her in Tokyo Bay. On 6 May Shinoda received new orders.
That day he became captain of the battleship Yamashiro. Yoshioki Tawara, whom he had already succeeded in Nagara, had died on 5 May while still in command of the battleship. Earlier in the war Chozaemon Obata had commanded her from May 1941 until September 1942, and Noboru Owada had held her from September 1942 until March 1943. By the spring of 1944 the old ship, sister of Fuso and armed with twelve 14-inch guns, was employed mainly on training duty. Shinoda docked her at Yokosuka from 12 to 24 May, then worked her in the Kisarazu roads, including service as a ship for radar practice.
In September the navy returned Battleship Division 2 to the Second Fleet for the fight over the Philippines. Yamashiro and Fuso left Kure on 23 September with a division of destroyers, army troops berthed on deck for the passage south. They called at Brunei, reached Singapore on 2 October, and anchored at Lingga on 4 October. Shoji Nishimura, commander of the division, flew his flag in Yamashiro. He commanded the squadron. Shinoda was captain of the ship.
Nishimura's force was sent through Surigao Strait to strike the American shipping in Leyte Gulf from the south, while a larger fleet came down from the north. The ships left Brunei on the afternoon of 22 October 1944. Before dawn on 25 October American destroyers and then a line of battleships met them in the strait, and Fuso was lost. Soon after 3:20 a.m. a torpedo hit Yamashiro on the port quarter. Shinoda flooded the magazines of the two after turrets, which put four of her 14-inch guns out of action, and the ship kept on. Radar-directed fire from American battleships then struck her hard. Around 4:11 two more destroyer torpedoes left her dead in the water, listing fast to port. When the list reached about forty-five degrees he ordered the crew to abandon ship and stayed on the bridge with Nishimura. Near 4:19 Yamashiro capsized and sank by the stern.
Shinoda was killed in command of her. He was forty-nine. The same day the navy promoted him to vice admiral. About sixteen hundred of her officers and men were lost. About ten lived to return to Japan. Yamashiro lies upside down on the bottom of Surigao Strait.