Ships
- IJN Sendai Captain from 20 May 1943
Kiichiro Shoji became captain of the light cruiser Sendai on 20 May 1943, as the ship finished a dockyard period at Sasebo. Extra anti-aircraft guns and a Type 21 air-search radar had been fitted during that refit. Sendai, completed in 1924 and the nameship of her class, was employed as a destroyer-squadron flagship, and under Shoji she returned to the Solomon Islands campaign.
For the next four months Sendai worked between Truk, Rabaul, and the Shortland Islands, carrying men and supplies while the Navy tried to hold the central Solomons. In July she was at sea off Kolombangara. On the 18th, Marine torpedo bombers from Guadalcanal attacked the formation, and medium bombers attacked two days later. Sendai came through both raids unhurt. On 1 November a heavy bomber attacked her, and she again escaped damage.
American troops landed that day at Cape Torokina on Bougainville. The Navy answered with a night sortie from Rabaul: the heavy cruisers Myōkō and Haguro, the light cruisers Sendai and Agano, and the destroyers Shigure, Samidare, Shiratsuyu, Naganami, Wakatsuki, and Hatsukaze. In the early hours of 2 November, in Empress Augusta Bay, the force met an American task group of four light cruisers and eight destroyers that already had the Japanese ships on radar.
The opening turn was confused. Shigure sighted the American destroyers, swung hard to starboard, and launched torpedoes. Sendai, turning hard the same way, closed on Shigure and barely avoided a collision. The American cruisers then held Sendai under radar-directed six-inch fire. Early salvos hit, and the cruiser caught fire. Accounts of the battle also record two torpedo hits from the American destroyers. Sendai fell out of the action and drifted, burning, through the rest of the night. The destroyer Hatsukaze was lost in the same fight.
Around 5:30 in the morning Sendai listed to starboard and sank near 6 degrees 10 minutes south, 154 degrees 20 minutes east, about twenty-five nautical miles southwest of Cape Moltke. Shoji stayed aboard and was killed, one of about 185 men lost with the ship. Destroyers took many survivors out of the water. On 3 November the submarine Ro-104 picked up Admiral Ijuin, the squadron commander who had been embarked in Sendai, with 75 more men, and reached Rabaul on 5 November. Other survivors made Cape St. George in small boats. Shoji was promoted rear admiral after his death. The Navy removed Sendai from the list on 5 January 1944.