Ships
- IJN Tone Captain from 6 January 1945
Yusaku Okada, a captain of the Imperial Japanese Navy, took command of the heavy cruiser Tone on 6 January 1945, relieving Haruo Mayuzumi. The ship had just been withdrawn from the battle fleet. On 1 January she was designated a training ship and joined the Kure Training Squadron with the older cruisers Iwate, Izumo, and Yakumo.
Tone, completed in November 1938, was the name ship of a class built to scout for the carriers. Eight 20-centimeter guns stood in twin turrets forward, and the quarterdeck was given to catapults and floatplanes. Tametsugu Okada commanded her from September 1941 to July 1942, through the Hawaii operation, the Indian Ocean raid, and Midway. Later captains took her into the Solomons, and Mayuzumi had her at Leyte Gulf in October 1944, where the sister ship Chikuma was lost. Tone then came home. A winter refit at Maizuru added light anti-aircraft guns and a newer radar. Cruiser Division 7 had been dissolved in November 1944, and for a time she served in Cruiser Division 5 with Kumano.
Fuel for a heavy cruiser was nearly exhausted when Okada came aboard. After the Maizuru work, Tone shifted to Etajima on 18 February 1945 and stayed in the Inland Sea. Under his command she served as a school ship at her moorings. Cadets trained at the guns and in the boats of a cruiser whose oil supply held her inside home waters.
American carrier aircraft reached that anchorage before spring was out. On 19 March 1945 a raid against the ships near Kure damaged Tone. She was still afloat and still manned when Task Force 38 struck the Kure area on 24 July. Bombs and near misses opened the hull, and she settled in shallow water with part of the ship above the surface. A further strike on 28 July hit the stranded cruiser with rockets and armor-piercing bombs. By 29 July she lay broken and aground off Nomi Island, near Etajima. Okada was her captain through those attacks.
He remained in command until the surrender on 15 August 1945. Tone was removed from naval service on 20 November 1945. The wreck was raised after the war and broken up at Kure, the scrapping finished in 1948. Okada later wrote his own account of the cruiser's last months, the training duty at Etajima and the July raids that left her on the bottom.