Ships
- IJN Hosho Captain from 12 June 1935 · Relieved on 15 November 1935
Kokichi Terada was born on 11 August 1886. He entered the Imperial Japanese Naval Academy with its 36th class and finished 135th among 191 graduates. After the academy he attended the navy's gunnery school and torpedo school, the usual course for a line officer, and his later postings show a career that settled into naval aviation.
On 1 November 1930 he became executive officer of the Tateyama Naval Air Group. On 14 November 1931 he was attached to the Sasebo Naval District, and on 1 December 1931 he took command of the Omura Naval Air Group. He moved on 15 November 1932 to command of the Sasebo Naval Air Group. Through the early 1930s his duty was with the navy's shore air stations.
His first command afloat in this period was the seaplane tender Kamoi. He was appointed special-service captain on 20 October 1933 and captain on 1 June 1934. On 15 November 1934 he went to the Kasumigaura Naval Air Group as executive officer and chief instructor, a training appointment at a main center of naval flight instruction.
On 12 June 1935 Terada was appointed captain of Hosho, Japan's first aircraft carrier. Earlier captains of the ship included Jiro Toshima and Rokukichi Takeda. His own command lasted five months and fell across the Fourth Fleet Incident. In late September 1935, during large maneuvers, a typhoon caught the fleet off the Sanriku coast. Hosho was damaged in the storm, and the forward part of her flight deck collapsed. She reached the Yokosuka Navy Yard at the end of October. Terada was relieved on 15 November 1935 and attached to the Yokosuka Naval District, as the carrier went on into a repair and strengthening period that continued into 1936.
On 10 April 1936 he returned to the Omura Naval Air Group as its commander. On 1 December 1936 he was appointed captain of the fleet carrier Akagi while that ship was in the midst of a long reconstruction. He left Akagi on 27 August 1937 to become commander of the 3rd Carrier Division.
The division command came in the opening months of the war in China. Terada was promoted rear admiral on 1 December 1937 while still in that post. On 15 December 1938 he was attached to the Naval General Staff. On 1 December 1939 he took command of the 12th Combined Air Group, and on 1 November 1940 he returned to the Naval General Staff. He was placed awaiting orders on 16 December 1940 and transferred to the reserve on 21 December 1940. He died on 24 June 1963.