Ships
- IJN Naganami Captain from 25 November 1943
Takuji Mori (森卓次), a native of Saga Prefecture and a graduate of the Imperial Japanese Navy's Etajima academy in March 1928, was a lieutenant commander when the Pacific War began. He commanded the old destroyer Akikaze from April 1941 into October 1942, the destroyer Hibiki from late 1942 to 25 November 1943, and then, for about eleven weeks, the damaged destroyer Naganami. The record of his service is a record of the ships: the convoy and transport work of the rear areas, the Kiska evacuation, and a hulk under tow. Almost nothing survives about the man himself.
The published class lists give his home as Saga, on Kyushu. A Japanese reference page adds that he came from the middle school at Ogi, in the same prefecture. His date of birth, his family and his schooling before Etajima are not recorded in the sources.
He was a member of the Naval Academy's Class 56, which graduated 111 men on 16 March 1928. The class list gives his name, his home prefecture and no fate. Nothing in the sources describes him as a cadet, the training cruises that followed graduation, or the posts he held in the thirteen years before he is next heard of.
The next record has him as a shōsa, lieutenant commander, and a destroyer captain. One record gives his previous command, without dates, as the destroyer Minekaze. On 10 April 1941, according to the Japanese ship history built on the official personnel gazettes, he became captain of Akikaze.
Akikaze was one of the oldest destroyers in the fleet, a Minekaze-class ship completed in April 1921. When Mori took her she belonged to Destroyer Division 34, with Hakaze and Tachikaze, and in September 1941 the division was assigned to the Eleventh Air Fleet, the land-based naval air force that did much of the early fighting in the Philippines and the Dutch East Indies. His ship was therefore in the rear of the Southern Operation rather than the front. On 8 December 1941 she was at Takao, Formosa, on air-sea rescue duty for aircraft in trouble during the first strikes on the Philippines. Over the next weeks the record shows her escorting an aircraft transport from Takao to Legaspi and back, then a convoy to Davao and patrols and escort work from that port. In February 1942 she went on to Ambon and worked from there until she left for Maizuru on 22 April, where she was docked for upkeep until early June.
In June 1942 she moved to Rabaul and began the work that would occupy her there: escorting transports to Lae, Kavieng and Tulagi, then, after the American landings in the Solomons on 7 August, carrying aviation fuel and airfield-construction material to Buka and escorting auxiliary vessels. On 5 and 6 August the record has her at sea with the carrier Unyō, screening her as she flew off Zero fighters and dive bombers for Rabaul, and taking aboard the base personnel of the Second Air Group to carry to Rabaul. On 7 August she made a transport run to Buka, attacked on the way by a single aircraft without damage. The sources do not say what Mori did in any of these runs; the ship was operating under the air fleet at Rabaul, and the entries are simply the ship's daily record.
He left Akikaze in October 1942.
He took command of Hibiki, an Akatsuki-class destroyer that had been damaged by American flying boats at Kiska in June 1942 and repaired at Yokosuka by the time he joined her. Under him she did the unglamorous work that was most of what a destroyer did in 1943. In the winter and spring she escorted the carriers Taiyō, Unyō and Chūyō between Yokosuka and Truk; in May she went out from Yokosuka for patrol and escort duty in the northern area; and in July she took part in the evacuation of Kiska. The first attempt, from 7 to 17 July, was aborted for weather. The second sailed from Paramushiro on 22 July and was completed on 29 July, with Hibiki, the cruisers Abukuma and Kiso and five other destroyers assigned to the transport unit; Hibiki is credited with taking off 418 evacuees.
In September she went to Shanghai and then, from 24 September to 5 October, escorted a troop convoy for the Army's 17th Division from Shanghai by way of Truk to Rabaul, the movement known as Operation T2. In October and November she escorted tanker convoys from Truk to Singapore and back by way of Balikpapan, and from 23 November began troop-transport runs from Truk to Ponape, Kwajalein, Mili and Kusaie.
On 25 November 1943 he was appointed to Naganami, a destroyer completed in June 1942, and his relief on Hibiki took over the same day. Under her first captain Naganami had escorted at Santa Cruz and in the Guadalcanal naval battles, fought at Tassafaronga and Empress Augusta Bay, and taken part in the Kiska evacuation, and on 11 November, during an American air raid on Rabaul, she had lost her stern to a torpedo hit and been left dead in the water. He took her fourteen days after the hit, with her stern gone, at Rabaul. The record has her towed from Rabaul to Truk by the light cruiser Yūbari from 3 to 8 December, then towed by the cruiser Nagara from Truk by way of Saipan to Tokuyama from 15 to 24 January 1944, and docked at Kure for repair and refit. He was relieved of command there on 10 February 1944. The next captain recorded, appointed on 1 June, had come from command of Hatsuharu.
The trail goes cold on 10 February 1944. The record shows no further ship command for him, and neither the list of his class nor any other source gives a date or place of death or a rank beyond lieutenant commander. Whether he survived the war, what he did after leaving Naganami, and what he became afterwards are not known.