Ships
- IJN Yamato Captain from 7 September 1943
Takeji Ono was a captain in the Imperial Japanese Navy. On 7 September 1943 he assumed command of the battleship Yamato. She had been built at Kure and commissioned on 16 December 1941, with Gihachi Takayanagi as her first commanding officer. Her main battery was nine 46-centimeter guns, the heaviest ever mounted on a battleship that went to sea.
For a year she served as flagship of the Combined Fleet. Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto used her in that role from February 1942, with his chief of staff Matome Ugaki, and for much of the time she lay at Truk while the carrier battles of the year were fought in other parts of the Pacific. On 11 February 1943 the flag moved to the sister ship Musashi. Yamamoto was killed on 18 April 1943 when American fighters shot down the aircraft carrying him over Bougainville. Chiaki Matsuda had taken command of Yamato on 17 December 1942. In May 1943 he brought her home from Truk to Kure, and over the summer the yard added anti-aircraft guns and radar. Promoted rear admiral on 1 May 1943, Matsuda stayed in command until Ono relieved him.
Ono joined a ship already headed back to the Carolines. On 16 August 1943 Yamato had left Kure with the battleships Nagato and Fuso, the carrier Taiyo, the heavy cruisers Atago and Takao, the light cruiser Noshiro, and a group of destroyers. She was back inside the Truk lagoon when he took command on 7 September. Through the losing fight for the Solomons the Navy kept its heaviest gunnery ships at that anchorage. Sailors in the fleet called Yamato the Yamato Hotel, a name for her long stays in port and for the better meals and living spaces on a ship of her size. Under Ono the autumn passed there.
Late in December Yamato left Truk on a transport passage toward Japan. On 25 December 1943 the American submarine Skate hit her with a torpedo. The blast opened the hull aft and flooded compartments, but the ship kept power and steering and reached a home dockyard under her own power. Repair work ran into the spring of 1944 and included a further strengthening of her anti-aircraft battery.
Later captains took Yamato into the fleet battles of the war's last year. Nobuei Morishita commanded her at the Battle of the Philippine Sea in June 1944, in the vanguard under Takeo Kurita, and again at Leyte Gulf in October, when Kurita moved his flag aboard after the heavy cruiser Atago was sunk and the battleship fired on American escort carriers and destroyers off Samar. Kosaku Aruga was captain on her last operation. On 7 April 1945 Seiichi Ito led Yamato, the light cruiser Yahagi, and eight destroyers toward Okinawa. Aircraft from American fast carriers sank the battleship that afternoon southwest of the island. Ito and Aruga were lost with her, and fewer than three hundred of some 3,300 men on board survived.