Ships
- IJN Kiyoshimo Captain from 5 September 1944
Shizuka Kajimoto was born on 25 June 1908 on the island of Etajima in Hiroshima Prefecture, the youngest of nine children. He attended the old middle school at Kure, entered the Imperial Japanese Naval Academy in April 1925 with the 56th class, and graduated in March 1928. His first sea duty was in the armored cruiser Yakumo, the heavy cruiser Aoba, and the aircraft carrier Akagi. He was promoted to lieutenant in 1930.
His junior years were spent in gunnery and torpedo billets. He was gunnery officer of the destroyer Kiku and also served in Asagao, the cruiser Tsushima, and the destroyer Shirayuki. In 1934 he finished the advanced course at the Torpedo School and was promoted to lieutenant. He then went as navigator to the destroyer Mikazuki and to the submarine I-56, as torpedo officer to the destroyer Numakaze, and as torpedo officer to the heavy cruiser Kako. Promotion to lieutenant commander followed in 1940.
On 20 August 1941 he was appointed captain of the destroyer Yukaze. At the start of the Pacific War, Yukaze was with the First Fleet off Hashirajima, in the screen over the flagship Nagato and on escort duty with the carriers Hosho and Zuiho, in company with Mikazuki. He afterward commanded the destroyer Yayoi and was still her captain when she was lost in September 1942.
On 5 September 1944 he became captain of the destroyer Kiyoshimo, last of the Yugumo class, relieving Isamu Miyazaki, who had commanded her since she was completed in May. Kajimoto joined the ship at Lingga Roads, south of Singapore, where she was already serving in Destroyer Division 2 with Hayashimo and Akishimo in the Second Fleet. He took her as a lieutenant commander and was promoted to commander during 1944.
In mid-October Kiyoshimo escorted Admiral Takeo Kurita's fleet from Lingga to Brunei, and on 22 October she sailed with that force for the Philippines. On 24 October, in the Sibuyan Sea, she was with the group built around the battleships Kongo and Haruna, about seven miles astern of Yamato and Musashi, when American carrier aircraft attacked through the late morning. Kiyoshimo was damaged and stayed in action. After Musashi sank, Kajimoto kept the destroyer on the scene for about eight hours, well into the night, and took roughly five hundred survivors aboard, while Hamakaze recovered a larger number. Kurita's next order had not yet reached them, so the two captains agreed to make for Coron and then Manila. Many of the men taken from the water were later put ashore for the defense of the Philippines.
On 24 December Kiyoshimo sortied again, with the force sent to shell the American beachhead at San Jose on Mindoro. On the night of 26 December she was struck on the port side amidships. Fuel tanks ruptured and caught fire, the boiler rooms and the engine room were wrecked, and both main engines stopped. Unable to move, she sank about 145 miles south of Manila. Eighty-two of her men were killed and seventy-four injured. American accounts give the bombing to Army aircraft and the torpedo that finished her to the patrol boat PT-223. From a hole at the port waterline and flame breaking from the funnel, Kajimoto later judged that the hit which disabled the ship had been a torpedo. Asashimo rescued 169 survivors, Kajimoto among them. Kasumi took off others, including the division commander, Nagayoshi Shiraishi, and American patrol boats picked up five more, who were made prisoners. The force returned to Cam Ranh Bay on 29 December, and that day Kajimoto was relieved of command. The loss of Kiyoshimo closed his wartime command at sea. He lived on after the war and died on 8 October 1987.