Ships
- IJN Nagato In command from 27 April 1945
Miki Otsuka was born on 17 May 1891 and served as an officer of the Imperial Japanese Navy through both world wars. He reached the rank of rear admiral late in the Pacific War. His last command was the battleship Nagato, which he took on 27 April 1945. He was killed on her bridge on 18 July 1945.
He had already served in Nagato as a lieutenant commander in the 1920s. In the early 1930s he was executive officer of the light cruiser Tama, the battleship Yamashiro, and the heavy cruiser Chokai. He later superintended the fitting out of Tsurugizaki and Takasaki, hulls afterward completed as light carriers, and in December 1936 he became captain of the heavy cruiser Furutaka. A year later he went ashore. In December 1939, still a captain, he was placed on the reserve list.
The navy recalled him on 10 September 1941. He briefly commanded the auxiliary Noshiro Maru, then spent much of 1942 and 1943 as supervising officer of the Reimei Maru. From late December 1943 until March 1945 he was special-duty captain of the auxiliary seaplane tender Seikawa Maru, with periods attached to the Yokosuka Naval District between those appointments. On 15 October 1944 he was promoted to rear admiral.
Nagato was no longer a fleet battleship when he returned to her. After the Battle of Leyte Gulf she had come back to Japan short of fuel, and the navy kept her at Yokosuka as a coastal-defense ship. Yuji Kobe had commanded her until late November 1944, and Kiyomi Shibuya held the ship through the winter. On 20 April 1945 she was reduced to reserve. Otsuka assumed command on 27 April. The same hull had been the Combined Fleet flagship when Isoroku Yamamoto directed the opening of the Pacific War. By the spring of 1945 she lay alongside a pier at Yokosuka, camouflaged, with steam and electricity drawn in part from a converted submarine chaser moored beside her. In June her secondary guns and about half of her anti-aircraft guns were landed for shore use, and her crew was cut to fewer than a thousand men.
On 18 July 1945 American carrier aircraft attacked the ships still lying at Yokosuka. A 500-pound bomb burst on the roof of Nagato’s conning tower and killed Otsuka, his executive officer, and twelve sailors on the bridge. A second bomb exploded on deck farther aft and killed more of the crew. The navy promoted him to vice admiral on the day he died. Nagato remained afloat in the harbor through the surrender. In July 1946 she was taken to Bikini Atoll and lost as a target in the atomic-bomb tests there.