Ships
- IJN Nachi Captain from 20 August 1941 · Relieved on 16 November 1942
Takahiko Kiyota was born on 28 November 1892. He graduated from the Imperial Japanese Naval Academy on 19 December 1914 with the 42nd class, standing 42nd among 117 midshipmen. He later passed through the torpedo school, the gunnery school, and the Naval Staff College. In November 1929 he joined the heavy cruiser Aoba as navigator. He was promoted to commander in December 1932, and in November 1933 he became navigator of the battleship Kongō. In November 1934 he shifted to the Naval Hydrographic Department, the navy’s office for charts and surveys.
He took command of the fleet oiler Hayatomo in November 1937 and was promoted to captain on 1 December 1937. In July 1938 he moved to the oiler Naruto. That December he returned to the Hydrographic Department as chief of its administration section, and he stayed in that shore billet until the autumn of 1940. On 25 September 1940 he went back to sea as commanding officer of the heavy cruiser Kinugasa.
On 20 August 1941 Kiyota left Kinugasa for the heavy cruiser Nachi, second ship of the Myōkō class, with ten 8-inch guns and a heavy torpedo armament. At the opening of the Pacific War she sat in Cruiser Division 5 with Myōkō and Haguro, under Rear Admiral Takeo Takagi, inside Vice Admiral Ibō Takahashi’s Philippine Seizure Force. Nachi sailed from Palau in December 1941 and covered the landings at Legaspi and Davao, then stayed with the advance into the Netherlands East Indies.
On 27 February 1942 Nachi flew Takagi’s flag in the Battle of the Java Sea. A floatplane from the cruiser helped find the Allied squadron led by Rear Admiral Karel Doorman. Japanese gunfire and torpedoes broke that force apart through the afternoon, and in the night action torpedoes from Nachi and Haguro sank the Dutch light cruisers De Ruyter and Java. Doorman was lost with De Ruyter. On 1 March Nachi fought again with Haguro, Myōkō, and Ashigara. Their combined fire sank the damaged British cruiser Exeter and the destroyer Encounter south of Borneo.
After the East Indies fighting, Nachi went north. In June 1942 she served as flagship for Vice Admiral Boshirō Hosogaya while his force covered the landings on Attu and Kiska in the Aleutians, the northern side of the Midway offensive. She spent the summer and autumn on patrol between the Kurile Islands and the northern Pacific, reached Paramushiro on 26 October 1942, and anchored at Ōminato on 6 November. Kiyota was promoted to rear admiral on 1 November 1942, still in command of the cruiser. On 16 November 1942 Akira Sone relieved him.
He returned ashore as chief of the First Department of the Naval Hydrographic Department, and in 1943 he also held the department’s general-affairs post. On 10 January 1944 he hoisted a flag at sea again as commander of Cruiser Division 14. The tour was brief. On 8 April 1944 he took the Second Convoy Escort headquarters, charged with merchant convoys while American submarines were cutting Japanese shipping. On 8 July 1944 he became commander of the Kure Defense Squadron. On 20 July 1945 he was assigned to command the 8th Special Attack Squadron. He left active service on 15 November 1945 and died on 17 July 1961.
Nachi remained in the fleet after he left her. Shiro Shibuya commanded her in 1943 and 1944, and Enpei Kanooka had the ship in her last months. In October 1944 she carried the flag of Kiyohide Shima during the Philippines campaign. On 5 November 1944 American carrier aircraft sank her in Manila Bay, and Kanooka was killed with most of her crew.