Ships
- IJN Hosho Captain from 1 March 1944 · Relieved on 6 July 1944
Kiyoshi Koda, a captain of the Imperial Japanese Navy and a member of the Naval Academy's 49th class, commanded the aircraft carrier Hosho from 1 March 1944 until 6 July 1944.
Hosho had been completed at Tsurumi in December 1922 as Japan's first carrier designed from the keel up to operate aircraft. By the Pacific War she was a small, elderly ship. In the opening months she stayed with the battleships of the Combined Fleet's Main Body. At Midway in June 1942 she took eight obsolete biplane attack aircraft to sea and flew searches and antisubmarine patrols for that force, then returned to the Inland Sea to train aircrews.
On 1 January 1944 Hosho was placed in the training force of the 12th Air Fleet. She kept the destroyer Yukaze as her usual companion and divided her time between Kure and the western Inland Sea. In February she came back under the Combined Fleet to school carrier pilots of the Third Fleet. Koda took command on 1 March, in succession to Captain Matsuura, and that shuttle went on through the spring.
June brought a tighter round of movements. Hosho arrived in Beppu Bay on 9 June, returned to Kure on 12 June, cruised to the waters off Atada on 15 June, and entered drydock at Kure on 17 June. She undocked on 24 June. The Battle of the Philippine Sea fell in those days, and the old carrier spent them in the yard. Around the same stage of 1944 her four 140 mm guns were removed and her flight deck was lengthened so newer carrier aircraft could use her. On 30 June she sailed again for the western Inland Sea and the waters off Oita.
Koda was relieved on 6 July 1944, a little more than four months after he had come aboard. Hosho remained in home waters. By January 1945 she was working at aircraft training with the escort carrier Kaiyo, the target ship Settsu, and Yukaze. American carrier aircraft damaged her lightly during the strikes on Kure in July 1945. After the surrender she was employed as a repatriation transport into 1946, and she was scrapped in 1947.