Ships
- IJN Mikazuki Captain from 15 November 1940
Tsuneo Sakamoto was an officer of the Imperial Japanese Navy, a member of the Naval Academy's 52nd class, which graduated on 24 July 1924. As a lieutenant commander he commanded the destroyer Mikazuki from 15 November 1940 to 20 August 1941, and then the river gunboat Hira on the Yangtze. He was killed in her on 31 May 1943, when American fighter-bombers attacked her on the river upstream of Hankow. Seven other men of the crew died with him. The record of his life is a school, a class, two commands and the day of his death.
A Japanese roll of Naval Academy graduates by class gives Kagoshima Second Middle School as his school and lists him in the 52nd class, of 236 graduates, which left the Academy on 24 July 1924. It gives his final rank as captain (taisa). His birth date, family and boyhood have not been found in the sources examined here.
Nothing in the sources examined here follows him between the Academy in 1924 and his first known command in 1940. His ships, his courses and his promotions over those sixteen years are not recorded in the material examined. The appointment of 15 November 1940 is recorded in the Navy's personnel gazette as cited in the Japanese reference article on the destroyer, which gives him the rank of lieutenant commander (shōsa).
Mikazuki was a Mutsuki-class destroyer built at Sasebo and completed on 5 May 1927; she was thirteen years old when he took her. She belonged to the 23rd Destroyer Division. She had served along the central and south China coast since the war in China began in 1937, and on the day he took her, 15 November 1940, her sister Mochizuki left the division for the 30th and Uzuki joined it. His predecessor, Mine Shima, had held her since 6 January 1940. On 10 April 1941, in his time, Mikazuki was transferred to the staff of the 3rd Carrier Division. On 20 August 1941 he was relieved, and Lieutenant Commander Saneho Maeda took her. Under Maeda she served as guard ship for the carriers Hōshō and Zuihō at the opening of the Pacific War, went to Midway with Admiral Kondo's occupation force, and was sunk on a reef off New Britain on 27–28 July 1943 under a later captain.
The next command was a smaller ship and a stranger duty. On the same day of 20 August 1941 he was appointed captain of Hira, a river gunboat of 338 tons, built in 1923 by Mitsubishi at Kobe and sent in pieces to Hankow, where she was assembled for the Yangtze. Hira had been on the river for eighteen years. His predecessor, Toshimi Tsuchihashi, had commanded her from 15 October 1940. In December 1941, while the main fleet went to war in the Pacific, Hira was attached to the First China Expeditionary Fleet. The sources examined here say nothing of how she spent the following twenty-one months. He was promoted commander on 1 November 1942, according to the movement record.
On 31 May 1943, upriver from Hankow, Hira was attacked by several P-40 fighter-bombers of the U.S. Fourteenth Air Force. The record says she was hit in the engine room, the boiler room, the compass bridge, the upper part of the bridge, the midships upper deck and the crew's spaces, and was left unable to move. Eight of her crew were killed, among them her captain, Commander Sakamoto. Two others were seriously wounded. Tadaomi Murakami took command on 4 June 1943 and the ship went to Shanghai in June and July for repairs at the Kiangnan engineering and dock works. The sources examined here do not describe the attack in detail, say where on the river it took place, or tell what happened on her bridge in the minutes before it.
The movement record says that he was promoted rear admiral posthumously. The roll of graduates lists his final rank as captain. His family, his marriage if any, and where he is buried or remembered are not recorded in the sources examined here. Hira was bombed again in 1944, ran aground in November 1944, was dismantled for scrap in the spring of 1945, and was struck from the Navy list on 10 May 1945.