This MedLibrary.org supplementary page on Chuichi Nagumo is provided directly from the open source Wikipedia as a service to our readers. Please see the note below on authorship of this content, as well as the Wikipedia usage guidelines. To search for other content from our encyclopedia supplement, please use the form below:
Related Sponsors
| Chūichi Nagumo | |
|---|---|
| March 25, 1887 - July 6, 19441 | |
 Vice Admiral Chuichi Nagumo |
|
| Place of birth | Yonezawa, Yamagata Japan |
| Place of death | Northern Mariana Islands |
| Allegiance |  Empire of Japan |
| Service/branch |  Imperial Japanese Navy |
| Years of service | 1908-1944 |
| Rank | Admiral |
| Unit | Kido Butai |
| Commands held | Kido Butai, 1st Carrier Division, 1st Air Fleet, IJN 3rd Fleet, Sasebo Naval District, Kure Naval District, IJN 1st Fleet, Central Pacific Area Fleet, IJN 14th Air Fleet2 |
| Battles/wars | World War II Battle of the Eastern Solomons, Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands, Indian Ocean Raid, Attack on Pearl Harbor, Attack on Darwin, Battle of Midway |
| Awards | Order of the Rising Sun (2nd class), Order of the Rising Sun (3rd class), Order of the Golden Kite (3rd class), Grand Cordon of the Order of the Sacred Treasure2 |
- In this Japanese name, the family name is Nagumo.
Chūichi Nagumo (南雲 忠一 Nagumo Chūichi?, March 25, 1887 - July 6, 1944) was an admiral in the Imperial Japanese Navy during World War II and one time commander of the Kido Butai (the carrier battle group).
He committed suicide while defending Saipan.
Contents |
Biography
Early life
Nagumo was born in the city of Yonezawa, Yamagata Prefecture in northern Japan in 1887. He graduated from the 36th class of the Imperial Japanese Naval Academy in 1908, with a ranking of 8 out of a class of 191 cadets. As a midshipman, he served on the cruisers Soya, Nisshin and Niitaka. After his promotion to ensign in 1910, he was assigned to cruiser Asama.
After attending torpedo school and naval artillery school, he was promoted to sub-lieutenant and served on the battleship Aki, followed by Hatsuyuki. In 1914, he was promoted to lieutenant and was assigned to the battleship Kirishima, followed by the destroyer Sugi. He was assigned his first command on December 15, 1917: the destroyer Kisaragi.
Nagumo graduated from the Naval War College, and was promoted to lieutenant commander in 1920. His specialty was torpedo and destroyer tactics. From 1920 to 1921, he was captain of the destroyer Momi, but was soon pulled to shore duty with various assignments by the Imperial Japanese Navy General Staff. He became a commander in 1924. From 1925 to 1926, Nagumo accompanied a Japanese mission to study naval warfare strategy, tactics and equipment in Europe and the United States.
After his return to Japan, Nagumo served as an instructor at the Imperial Japanese Naval Academy from 1927-1929. Nagumo was promoted to the rank of captain in November 1929 and assumed command of the light cruiser Naka and from 1930 to 1931 was commander of the 11th Destroyer Division. After serving in administrative positions from 1931 to 1933, he assumed command of the heavy cruiser Takao from 1933 to 1934, and the battleship Yamashiro from 1934 to 1935. He was promoted to rear admiral on November 1, 1935.
As a Rear Admiral, Nagumo commanded the 8th Cruiser Division to support Imperial Japanese Army movements in China from the Yellow Sea. As a leading officer of the militaristic Fleet Faction, he also received a boost in his career from political forces.
From 1937 to 1938, he was Commandant of the Torpedo School, and from 1938-1939, he was commander of the 3rd Cruiser Division. Nagumo was promoted to vice admiral on November 15, 1939. From November 1940 to April 1941, Nagumo was Commandant of the Naval War College.
World War II
On April 10, 1941, Nagumo was appointed Commander in Chief of the First Air Fleet, the Imperial Japanese Navy's main Carrier battle group, largely due to his seniority. Many contemporaries and historians have doubted his suitability for this command, given his lack of familiarity with naval aviation.
By this time, he had visibly aged, physically and mentally. Physically, he suffered from arthritis, perhaps from his younger days as an athletic kendo fencer. Mentally, he had become a cautious officer who spent every ounce of his effort going over tactical plans of every operation he was involved in.3
Admiral Nishizo Tsukahara had some doubts with his appointment, and commented, "Nagumo was an officer of the old school, a specialist of torpedo and surface maneuvers.... He did not have any idea of the capability and potential of naval aviation." At home, Nagumo did not receive a loving description, either. One of his two sons described him as a brooding father who was obsessed (and later disappointed) with pressuring his sons to follow his footsteps into the navy. Contrastingly, Nagumo's junior officers in the navy viewed him as precisely the father figure that his sons did not.4
However, while commanding the First Air Fleet, Nagumo oversaw the effective attack on Pearl Harbor, although he was later criticized for his failure to launch a third attack against Pearl Harbor,5 which might have destroyed the fuel oil storage and repair facilities which would have rendered the most important American naval base in the Pacific useless, and the submarine base and intelligence station which were the main factors in Japan's defeat.6
Nagumo was surrounded by able lieutenants such as Minoru Genda and Mitsuo Fuchida. He also fought well in the early 1942 campaigns. He was the fleet commander during the Bombing of Darwin and his Indian Ocean raid on the British Eastern Fleet was a success, sinking an aircraft carrier, two cruisers and two destroyers, and causing Admiral Sir James Somerville to retreat to East Africa.
At the end of his trip into the Indian Ocean, Nagumo's personal score card saw five battleships, one carrier, two cruisers, seven destroyers, dozens of merchantmen, transports, and various other vessels. He was also responsible for downing hundreds of Allied aircraft from six nations. Destruction brought upon Allied ports also disabled or slowed Allied operations. All the while, he had lost no more than a few dozen pilots.4
However, at the Battle of Midway, Nagumo's near-perfect record finally came to an end. His Carrier Striking Task Force lost four carriers in what proved to be the turning point of the Pacific War, and the massive aircrew losses would prove decisive to the performance of the Japanese navy in later engagements.
Afterwards, Nagumo was re-assigned as Commander in Chief of the Third Fleet and commanded aircraft carriers in the Guadalcanal campaign, but his actions there were largely indecisive, and in hindsight he slowly frittered away much of Japan's maritime strength.
Final days
On November 11, 1942, Nagumo was re-assigned back to Japan, where he was given command of the Sasebo Naval District. He transferred to the Kure Naval District on June 21, 1943. From October 1943 to February 1944, Nagumo was again Commander in Chief of the IJN 1st Fleet, which was largely involved in training duties by that time.
However, as the war situation continued to deteriorate against Japan, Nagumo was once again given a combat command. He was sent to the Mariana Islands on March 4, 1944 as commander in chief of the short-lived IJN 14th Air Fleet, and simultaneously commander in chief of the equally short-lived Central Pacific Area Fleet.
The invasion of Saipan began on June 15, 1944. Within days the IJN under Vice Admiral Jisaburo Ozawa were overwhelmed by the US 5th Fleet in the decisive Battle of the Philippine Sea costing Japan approximately 500 aircraft. Nagumo and his Army peer General Yoshitsugu Saito then were left on their own to defend the island of Saipan against the American assault. On July 6, during the last stages of the Battle of Saipan, Nagumo committed suicide; not in the traditional method of seppuku, but rather a pistol to the temple. His remains were later found by U.S. Marines in the cave where he spent his last days as the commander of the Saipan defenders.7 He was posthumously promoted to admiral.
 |
Wikiquote has a collection of quotations related to: Chūichi Nagumo |
Promotions
- Midshipman - November 21, 1908
- Ensign - January 15, 1910
- Sublieutenant - December 1, 1911
- Lieutenant - December 1, 1914
- Lieutenant Commander - December 1, 1920
- Commander - December 1, 1924
- Captain - November 30, 1929
- Rear Admiral - November 15, 1935
- Vice Admiral - November 15, 1939
- Admiral - July 8, 1944 (Posthumous)1
References
Books
- D'Albas, Andrieu (1965). Death of a Navy: Japanese Naval Action in World War II, Devin-Adair Pub. ISBN 0-8159-5302-X.
- Dull, Paul S. (1978). A Battle History of the Imperial Japanese Navy, 1941-1945, Naval Institute Press. ISBN 0-87021-097-1.
- Denfeld, D. Colt (1997). Hold the Marianas: The Japanese Defense of the Mariana Islands, White Mane Pub. ISBN 1-57249-014-4.
- Goldberg, Harold J. (2007). D-day in the Pacific: The Battle of Saipan, Indiana University Press. ISBN 0-253-34869-2.
- Jones, Don (1986). Oba, The Last Samurai, Presidio Press. ISBN 0-89141-245-X.
- Morison, Samuel Eliot (2001 (reissue)). New Guinea and the Marianas, March 1944-August 1944, vol. 8 of History of United States Naval Operations in World War II. Champaign, Illinois, USA: University of Illinois Press. ISBN 0-252-07038-0.
External links
- Vice Admiral Chuichi Nagumo, IJN, (1886-1944)
- Beyond the Movie: Pearl Harbor
- WW2DB: Chuichi Nagumo
- Breaching the Marianas: The Battle for Saipan (Marines in World War II Commemorative Series)
- Nishida, Hiroshi. "Materials of IJN: Nagumo, Chuichi". Imperial Japanese Navy. Retrieved on 2007-08-03.
Notes
- ^ a b Nishida, Imperial Japanese Navy
- ^ a b Nagumo Chuichi at navalhistory.flixco.info
- ^ Pearl Harbor: Japanese Aircraft during and after the Raid
- ^ a b World War II Database page on Nagumo.
- ^ Blair, Clay, Jr. Silent Victory (Lippincott, 1975); Willmott, H. P. Barrier and the Javelin (United States Naval Institute Press, 1983); Holmes, W. J. Double-Edged Secrets (United States Naval Institute Press, 1979).
- ^ Blair and Holmes, passim.
- ^ Breaching the Marianas: The Battle for Saipan
|
|||||||
Wikipedia content modification information:
- This page was last modified on 2 December 2008, at 18:06.
Wikipedia Authorship and Review
Wikipedia content provided here is not reviewed directly by MedLibrary.org. Wikipedia content is authored by an open community of volunteers and is not produced by or in any way affiliated with MedLibrary.org.
Wikipedia Usage Guidelines
This article is licensed under the GNU Free Documentation License. It uses material from the Wikipedia article on "Chuichi Nagumo".
The URL for this specific entry is:
All Wikipedia text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License. (See Copyrights for details). Wikipedia® is a registered trademark of the Wikimedia Foundation, Inc.