Ships
- IJN Yamashiro Captain from 1 September 1942
Noboru Owada was born on 6 October 1893. He graduated from the Naval Academy in November 1916, eighth in a class of ninety-five, and his first ship was the armored cruiser Yakumo. After a turn in the battleship Kongo he was an ensign by December 1917. In 1918 he served on the staff of the 2nd Special Task Fleet and in the armored cruiser Izumo, then moved to the battleship Katori. Promoted lieutenant junior grade at the end of 1919, he passed the basic gunnery and torpedo courses, served in the destroyer Take, returned to Izumo, and joined the battleship Fuso. He became a lieutenant in December 1922, completed the advanced torpedo course, and in 1923 was assigned to the destroyer Tachikaze.
He entered the submarine school in 1924. The next year he served in the submarine Ro-29 and, from December, commanded Ro-5. After the Naval Staff College A-course he was promoted lieutenant commander in December 1928 and given Ro-55, then I-54 in May 1929. From November 1930 he was on the staff of Submarine Squadron 2. Duty at the Yokosuka Naval District and in the Navy Ministry's Bureau of Naval Affairs followed, and he was promoted commander in November 1933. From the end of 1935 he traveled in Europe and the United States. In November 1936 he joined the Combined Fleet staff. On 1 December 1937 he was promoted captain and took command of Submarine Division 20. In November 1938 he became an adjutant of the Navy General Staff.
On 10 November 1940 he was given the old armored cruiser Iwate, by then a training ship. On 6 January 1941 he moved to the training cruiser Katori and remained her captain until July 1942, so the ship was his through the opening of the Pacific War. He then went to the Yokosuka Naval District.
On 1 September 1942 Owada became captain of the battleship Yamashiro, relieving Chozaemon Obata. The ship was just completing a short docking at Kure. She returned to the Combined Fleet anchorage at Hashirajima, kept a standby watch in the Inland Sea, and drilled with the battle line. On 28 October she took part in gunnery trials in the Suo Nada with Musashi, Nagato, Ise, Hyuga, and Fuso. In December she worked with the carrier Zuikaku and the battleships Musashi, Nagato, and Fuso on aircrew training in the western Inland Sea. After the carrier losses at Midway the navy had looked at cutting the Fuso-class ships down into hybrid carrier-battleships, with the work penciled in for the summer of 1943. That plan was dropped, and Yamashiro stayed a battleship on alert and training duty. On 1 February 1943 she left Hashirajima for Yokosuka, arriving two days later, to serve as a target for land-based bomber crews. Captain Mikio Hayakawa relieved Owada there on 1 March 1943.
On 10 March he was attached to the Fifth Fleet, the navy's command in northern waters, and on 19 March he became its chief of staff. Eight days later the fleet's cruisers fought the Battle of the Komandorski Islands, and at the end of the month Vice Admiral Shiro Kawase became the fleet commander. The Aleutian campaign then closed in. American forces retook Attu in May, and the Japanese garrison was taken off Kiska at the end of July. Owada was promoted rear admiral on 1 May 1943. He left the Fifth Fleet on 17 November for a short tour on the staff of the Southeast Area Fleet, the command responsible for the Solomon Islands and the Bismarck Archipelago.
On 4 December 1943 he returned to submarines as commander of Submarine Squadron 7. By the middle of 1944 the squadron was at Truk in the Caroline Islands. Its boats were committed to the Leyte campaign that autumn, and their patrols brought little result against the American invasion.
On 20 March 1945 he took command of the 10th Special Attack Squadron in home waters. The squadron was armed with kaiten, manned torpedoes carried out by submarines, and shinyo, small motorboats loaded with explosives. He retired on 15 October 1945 and died on 30 September 1960.
Yamashiro passed to later captains after Owada left her. Yoshioki Tawara commanded the ship from December 1943 until he died of illness on 5 May 1944, still in the post. Katsukiyo Shinoda succeeded him. On 25 October 1944, in the night battle in Surigao Strait, Yamashiro was sunk while serving as flagship for Shoji Nishimura, commander of the southern force sent into Leyte Gulf. Shinoda was her captain, and both men were lost with the ship.