Ships
- IJN Kumano Captain from 17 February 1943
Captain Toshizo Fujita of the Imperial Japanese Navy took command of the heavy cruiser Kumano on 17 February 1943. He relieved Kikumatsu Tanaka, who had commanded her from the opening of the Pacific War, including the Midway operation in the cruiser division led by Takeo Kurita. Kumano was a Mogami-class ship, fast, armed with ten 20 cm guns and Type 93 torpedoes, and already a year into wartime cruising and transport work when Fujita came aboard.
In the spring and early summer of 1943 the cruiser went into the yards in Japan. The refit added a Type 21 air-search radar and more 25 mm anti-aircraft guns in place of lighter machine guns, a response to the American aircraft that were now reaching Japanese ships in the Solomon Islands.
Fujita then took Kumano south again. In June she carried troops from Japan toward Rabaul, and in July she covered further transport runs in the Solomons. On 18 July, off Kolombangara, a torpedo bomber flying from Guadalcanal attacked her. Bombs falling close aboard damaged the ship. Emergency repairs followed aboard the repair ship Yamabiko Maru at Rabaul and then aboard the repair ship Akashi at Truk, and a full dockyard period at Kure ran from early September into late October.
Late in November 1943, after American troops landed in the Gilbert Islands, Cruiser Division 7 sailed with Kumano toward the Marshalls. The cruisers came home short of a battle. In December Kumano was named flagship of the division. Through the winter and into March 1944 she remained with the fleet in rear waters, her movements routine while the light anti-aircraft battery continued to grow.
Fujita left Kumano on 29 March 1944, and Soichiro Hitomi became captain. Under Hitomi the cruiser fought in the Philippine Sea and at Leyte Gulf, was badly damaged off Samar, and was sunk by American carrier aircraft at Santa Cruz, Luzon, on 25 November 1944. Hitomi was lost with the ship. Fujita's year had been the middle of her war: a refit, troop runs, one damaging air attack, and a sortie that ended short of the enemy.