Chihagi, Tomiji

Ships

• IJN Nenohi Captain from 15 November 1940 · Relieved on 20 April 1942
• IJN Tamanami Captain from 15 June 1944

The name on the captain list is Chihagi, Tomiji. The man who fits the ships, the class, and the dates is an Imperial Japanese Navy officer whose name is written 千本木十三四. A class roster that prints the kanji beside a romanization gives Senpongi Tomiji, of the Naval Academy's 52nd class, from Gunma, a captain, killed on 7 July 1944 in the destroyer Tamanami in the South China Sea. The gazettes of 1944, which do not print kana, appoint that same 千本木十三四, then a commander, to Hayanami and then to Tamanami, and later promote him to captain effective the day Tamanami was lost. Combined Fleet's tabular record of Nenohi calls the lieutenant commander who had her from November 1940 to April 1942 both Chihogi Tomiji and Chihagi Tomiji, class 52, formerly captain of Karukaya, and later captain of Tamanami. Those are one career. Chihagi is not a reading the characters will bear.

He is not 千早猛彦, Chihaya Takehiko, the aviator of the 62nd class who was killed off Tinian on 11 June 1944 and promoted two ranks, posthumously, to captain. He is not the Osaka painter Mitsuyu Chihagi. No second officer named Chihagi Tomiji turns up once 千本木十三四 is set against the ships.

Origins

Nothing in the gazettes, and nothing in the class lists used here, gives a birth date, a town, a father's name, a school, a wife, or a child. The 52nd-class roster that records final ranks as they stood for a compilation concerned with men already dead or otherwise accounted for by about 1977 puts only 群馬, Gunma, in the column for native place and school. Classmates on the same sheet often have a middle school named. His line does not. Gunma is a prefecture, not a house. The same sheet gives his final rank as captain and his death as the South China Sea, in Tamanami (玉波). An English arrangement of that class, made with Jeff Donahoo, agrees: Senpongi Tomiji, kanji 千本木十三四, from Gunma, captain, killed in action 7 July 1944 in Tamanami.

The surname dictionaries read 千本木 as せんぼんぎ, Senbongi, with せんぼんき also recorded. Senpongi, with a p, is the class-list romanization, not a kana line in a gazette. The given name 十三四 is read Tomiji in that class list and in Combined Fleet. The appointment papers inspected for this essay print the characters and the rank, not the sound. No signature, seal reading, or family register has been seen. Tomiji is the reading those lists use. It is not invented here, and it is not proved by kana either.

Formation

The 52nd class of the Naval Academy at Etajima is listed as 236 graduates on 24 July 1924, the twenty-fourth day of the seventh month of Taishō 13. 千本木十三四 is on that list. Where he stood in the order of merit is not. The sheet is not arranged by class rank. What the navy did with him for the next fourteen years is not in any source read for this essay. There is no midshipman cruise, no first ship, no torpedo school, no staff job, no China year that can be tied to his name. By 1 August 1938 he was a lieutenant commander, 海軍少佐. That is the first rank the appointment record attaches to him. The date he became a lieutenant commander is not among the papers seen here.

On that day the captain lists, citing the Navy Ministry secretariat's appointment gazette, extraordinary issue No. 219 of 1 August 1938 (JACAR C13072074200), make him captain of the destroyer Karukaya (刈萱). She was not a fleet destroyer of the war that was coming. She was a Wakatake-class ship, second class, completed in 1923 at Fujinagata as Destroyer No. 18, renamed Karukaya in 1928, on the order of 820 tons. A ship chronology that cites the interior orders says that on 15 December 1938, four months after he took her, she was placed in fourth reserve. On 15 November 1939 she was written into an older Destroyer Division 32, not the wartime division of that number. On 1 December 1939 her port registry moved to Maizuru and she was still carried as a fourth-reserve destroyer. On 25 January 1940 that division entry was deleted. On 15 June 1940 an interior order directed that for the time being her complement not be filled, and the captain's billet was vacant. The gazette cited for his relief is No. 491 of 15 June 1940 (JACAR C13072078200).

Those interior orders were not opened page by page for this essay. If the chronology has them right, his first known command lasted twenty-two months and, for most of that time, was the captaincy of a ship the navy had laid up. A reserve destroyer still has a captain, a hull, and a paper life. It does not have a cruise. No diary, letter, or fitness report has been found that says what he made of those months, or where he lived while the ship sat in reserve. The sources do not say how old he was when the billet was closed.

Five months then disappear. On 15 November 1940 the captain list, citing gazette No. 555 (JACAR C13072079500), appoints Lieutenant Commander 千本木十三四 to Nenohi (子日), the second ship of the Hatsuharu class. Combined Fleet's table calls the same appointment Chihogi Tomiji, class 52, former commanding officer of Karukaya, and in the next section Chihagi Tomiji. The former captain, 松本作次, went to the staff of the China Area Fleet. Combined Fleet romanizes him Matsumoto Sakuji. That reading was not checked against kana. Nenohi was in Destroyer Division 21 with Wakaba, Hatsuharu, and Hatsushimo, under Destroyer Squadron 1. She was a real seagoing command, the first one the record clearly gives him.

War years as lived

The gazettes of 1938, 1940, and 1942 were retrieved. The 1944 pages were read. The earlier bundles were not transcribed line by line, so the pre-1944 dates below are the dates the Japanese captain lists attach to those reference codes, corroborated by the class, the ships, and Combined Fleet's table, not lines copied off the glass.

He had Nenohi from 15 November 1940 to 20 April 1942. The war began thirteen months into that command. What the secondary movement tables say of the ship in those months is the only account there is of how he spent them, and they are tables of the ship, not of the man. They do not quote him. They do not say whether he was on the bridge for any particular hour. They do place the ship, and he was her captain on the dates they cover until 20 April 1942.

At the opening of the Pacific war, Destroyer Division 21 was with the First Fleet in home waters, screening battleships and patrolling against submarines. Between 18 and 23 December 1941 the division left Tokuyama, met the Striking Force coming back from Hawaii, and took it in to Hashirajima. In the middle of January 1942 it escorted a tanker convoy from Tokuyama to Davao. On 24 January it was with the Kendari landing force. The next day Hatsuharu was damaged in a collision with the light cruiser Nagara, and Nenohi is recorded as helping her and escorting her back to Davao. In February the division, without Hatsuharu at the start, was with the Makassar landing and then the Bali and Lombok landing. On the night of 28 February–1 March, in Bali Strait, the division engaged four American destroyers leaving the Java Sea and did not stop them. From 16 to 25 March the division went from Makassar to Sasebo and into dock. On 20 April 1942 Lieutenant Commander Terauchi Saburō, previously captain of Mochizuki, relieved him. The gazette cited is No. 845 of that date (JACAR C13072085200). Combined Fleet notes the relief and calls the departing captain the later commanding officer of Tamanami.

He was gone before the Aleutians. Nenohi went north under Terauchi, was torpedoed by Triton off Agattu on 5 July 1942, and sank with her captain and most of her people. That death is Terauchi's, not his. The two men were classmates, both of the 52nd class. The roster lists Terauchi's death as off Attu, captain of Nenohi. It lists 千本木's as the South China Sea, in Tamanami.

From 20 April 1942 until 10 June 1944 the name drops out. No ship, no school, no staff appointment, no promotion date to commander has been found. He was a lieutenant commander when he left Nenohi. He was a commander, 海軍中佐, when he reappeared. The war's middle, for him, is a blank of two years and seven weeks.

He reappeared on a ship that was already on the bottom.

Hayanami (早波), a Yūgumo-class destroyer and flagship of the new Destroyer Division 32, was sunk off Tawi-Tawi on 7 June 1944 by the American submarine Harder. Her captain, Commander 清水逸郎, and the division commander, Captain 折田常雄, were killed. The readings of those given names were not checked, and are not guessed here. A Japanese account of the anchorage, quoting Ugaki Matome's diary, puts the loss at 1230, twenty miles or so from the base, with forty-five survivors and only the navigator among the officers. The appointment gazette, internal issue No. 1510, carries the line 補早波駆逐艦長, Commander 千本木十三四. The Japanese captain list dates that order 10 June 1944 and cites JACAR C13072099500, page 22 of the issue. The page is in the file, and the line is on it. The characters 六月十日 were not in the portion transcribed here. The ship had been gone for three days. A captaincy issued after the sinking could not have been a command at sea. It reads as a paper billet, held for five days, while the navy sorted out a division that had just lost its commander and its flagship. That reading is an inference from the dates. No order has been seen that says why his name was the one written in.

On 15 June the sorting was finished. Navy appointment gazette (甲), internal, No. 1517, issued 21 June 1944 over the name of the Navy Minister's secretariat, records orders dated 15 June. On the page, Commander Aoki Kyūji (青木久治) is appointed commander of Destroyer Division 32, and Commander 千本木十三四 is appointed captain of Tamanami (補玉波駆逐艦長). The file is JACAR C13072099600. Tamanami was the division's remaining large destroyer at Tawi-Tawi, with Fujinami and Hamanami. Aoki, who had been Tamanami's captain, stayed in her as the division commander. The new captain took the chair. The senior officer of the division was embarked in the ship he now commanded. For the next three weeks that was the shape of his duty: captain of the flagship, with his division commander aboard.

The movement tables put Destroyer Division 32, Tamanami, Fujinami, and Hamanami, in the Van Force under Vice Admiral Kurita Takeo for the Battle of the Philippine Sea on 19 and 20 June. The Van came under air attack on the 20th. Chiyoda, Haruna, and Maya were hit or near-missed. Tamanami is not recorded as damaged. No report read here describes an order he gave, a gun he fired, or a word he said. He had been her captain for four days. The battle is in his tenure. It is not in his voice.

After the battle the Mobile Fleet pulled back. Combined Fleet's Fujinami table has Fujinami and Tamanami escorting the tanker it calls Kokuyo Maru from Okinawa to Singapore between 23 and 29 June, and then, from 2 July, those two destroyers escorting that tanker and the damaged light cruiser Kitakami from Singapore toward Kure by way of Manila. The Japanese account of Tamanami, which cites the war diary of the special transport Kyokutō Maru (旭東丸), names the tanker Kyokutō Maru of Iino Kaiun, 10,051 tons, and has Kitakami and Destroyer Division 32, Tamanami and Fujinami, escorting her from Singapore toward Manila and Japan from 2 July. The two names are not the same ship. The diary was not read for this essay. The conflict is left standing in the last section. What both accounts agree is that in the first week of July he was at sea, west of Luzon, in company with Fujinami, screening a tanker and a damaged cruiser on the way toward Manila.

Cost

Before dawn on 7 July 1944 the escort met Mingo (SS-261), Lieutenant Commander Joseph J. Staley, on her fourth war patrol out of Manus. The Japanese compilation, drawing on Mingo's report as reprinted and on Kyokutō Maru's diary, says that around 0200 Tamanami, in a position it gives as 14°19′ N, 117°57′ E, west of the entrance to Manila Bay, detected a submarine and turned to attack. Mingo, the same account says, had four targets on radar, took the oncoming ship for a Fubuki-type destroyer making about twenty-three knots, went under, rode out a depth-charge attack it numbers at twelve charges, fired four torpedoes from the stern tubes that missed, and an hour later fired four from the bow. Three hit. Tamanami sank by the bow. The account calls it a sudden sinking. Fujinami turned back, searched, and dropped charges, and found nothing to hold. Uboat.net, a secondary Allied list, puts the sinking about 150 nautical miles west-southwest of Manila at 13°55′ N, 118°30′ E. Those positions are not the same. The patrol report itself was not in hand.

Fujinami's tabular record says the attack began about an hour after midnight on 6 July and that Tamanami was torpedoed at 0205, that Fujinami took the others on toward Manila and returned at 1600 to hunt and to look for survivors, and that there were very few, 276 men being lost. The Japanese Wikipedia entry says 276 were killed, naming Rear Admiral Aoki, promoted posthumously, and Commander 千本木, Tamanami's captain, among them, and that the search found no trace. The English Wikipedia entry says there were no survivors. The design complement of a Yūgumo was a little over two hundred; a wartime crew with a division staff aboard could run higher. Two hundred seventy-six is the figure both the Japanese entry and the Fujinami table use. It has not been checked against a muster. Whether "very few" survivors and "no survivors" can both be true depends on a count nobody here has seen.

He had been her captain for twenty-two days.

The secret appointment gazette (甲) No. 1660, in the December 1944 bundle JACAR C13072102100, promotes him from commander to captain effective 7 July 1944: 任海軍大佐, 海軍中佐 千本木十三四, under the date 昭和十九年七月七日. The characters 戦死 are not on that line. The promotion is dated the day the ship was lost, which is how the navy dated a dead officer's last rank, and the class roster records the rank as captain and the place as Tamanami. A Japanese footnote dates the issue 24 December 1944. The printed day of the month was not settled from the scan. Aoki's posthumous step was to rear admiral, in a different gazette. 千本木's was one rank, to captain. He was not given the two-rank jump some dead officers received.

Tamanami was removed from the Yūgumo class and from the navy list on 10 September 1944, in the interior orders cited by the ship's Japanese entry. That is the navy closing the hull. It is not a funeral.

After

No grave, no hometown notice, no widow, no child, and no quoted remark have been found. The class roster is the nearest thing to an obituary, and it is one line: captain, Gunma, South China Sea, Tamanami. The English record kept the given name Tomiji and lost the surname, writing Chihogi in one sentence and Chihagi in the next, which is how he entered a captain list as a man who seemed to have commanded only Tamanami, and only from 15 June 1944. It is not false about the date. It is silent about the fourteen years before Karukaya, the reserve command, Nenohi through the first four months of the war, the two-year blank, and the five days in which he was captain of a destroyer already sunk.

What the sea took is documented as a ship and a number. What the man was, under the rank, is not. The record shows a lieutenant commander given an old destroyer and then a reserve flag, a wartime captaincy of Nenohi through the southern landings and the missed intercept in Bali Strait, a disappearance into some unlocated billet while his former ship went north and died under a classmate, and a return in June 1944 to a division that had just been beheaded off Tawi-Tawi. He held the dead ship's title for less than a week, then took Tamanami with his division commander still aboard, went through the Philippine Sea without a recorded scratch on the ship, and three weeks after his appointment turned toward a submarine west of Luzon and was killed with her. That last turn is in the submarine's attack narrative and in the Japanese compilation of it. It is not in any order signed with his name. Nobody has left a sentence in which he says why he attacked, or whether the decision was his or Aoki's. Both of them died in the same hull.