Ships
- IJN Myoko Captain from 23 May 1942
Captain Teruhiko Miyoshi took command of the Imperial Japanese Navy heavy cruiser Myoko on 23 May 1942. She was the name ship of a class completed in the late 1920s and rebuilt in the 1930s. Ten eight-inch guns in five twin turrets formed her main battery. A heavy outfit of long-range torpedoes, scout aircraft, and space for an admiral's staff made her a fleet cruiser as well as a flagship. After reconstruction she still steamed at well above thirty knots.
He joined a ship just back from the Coral Sea. In the first week of May 1942, Myoko and her sister Haguro had screened the carriers Shokaku and Zuikaku. Captain Teijiro Yamazumi had commanded Myoko on that sortie, and Takeo Takagi, leading Cruiser Division 5, had flown his flag in her. The two heavy cruisers remained paired, and Miyoshi inherited both the ship and that place in the division.
His first operation was Midway. In the last days of May, Myoko left the Inland Sea with Haguro in Vice Admiral Kondo Nobutake's Second Fleet. Kondo's force was to cover the transports assigned to occupy Midway once Japan's carriers had dealt with the American fleet. Through the opening days of June, Cruiser Division 5 stayed with that covering body, south of the carrier battle. The loss of four Japanese carriers ended the landing. Myoko returned to Japan with the Second Fleet after a cruise spent on distant cover.
The summer turned the fleet toward the Solomons. A further heavy-cruiser raid into the Indian Ocean was set aside after United States Marines landed on Guadalcanal on 7 August 1942. Myoko shifted to Truk, the Combined Fleet's main base in the Caroline Islands. From there she sortied with the advance forces that covered the carrier battle of the Eastern Solomons in late August and the battle off the Santa Cruz Islands in late October. Miyoshi's cruiser worked as screen and support, keeping station with the striking groups through long days at sea.
A heavy-cruiser captain in that year counted fuel, boiler hours, and the chance of a night action. Myoko had been built and rebuilt for a high-speed gun line backed by a torpedo broadside larger than most foreign cruisers of her size carried. During Miyoshi's command her days were spent on the edge of carrier operations, where search planes, anti-aircraft watch, and exact station-keeping sat alongside the eight-inch battery.
His tour closed with Myoko still a front-line ship. Captains who followed him in her included Katsuhei Nakamura, Itsu Ishihara, Sutejiro Onoda, and Hokao Kagayama. She remained with the Combined Fleet through the central Pacific and into the Philippines campaign. Severe damage in late 1944 left her unable to steam with the battle line, and she spent the last months of the war laid up at Singapore.