World War II Database

Contributor: C. Peter Chen

ww2dbaseMochitsura Hashimoto was born in Kyoto, Japan to a Shinto priest. His older brothers all joined the military, and his father wished for his youngest son to enter priesthood, but to his disappointment Hashimoto joined the Japanese Navy in 1929. He was married in the early 1930s and eventually had two sons. He served as the torpedo officer aboard the submarine I-24 during the Second Sino-Japanese War and the opening act of the Pacific War, in which I-24 launched Kazuo Sakamaki's midget submarine Ha-19 toward Pearl Harbor, Hawaii, United States. Toward the end of the Pacific War, he was given command of the submarine I-58, which sank the cruiser USS Indianapolis on 30 Jul 1945, which killed 879 of Indianapolis' men. This sinking was Hashimoto's first and only kill during the war. After the war, he was promoted from the rank of lieutenant commander to commander. He was brought into court by the United States Navy to testify against Captain Charles McVay, commanding officer of USS Indianapolis; he testified that Indianapolis was not zigzagging, but it would not have made any difference in evading his submarine; decades later, he sent a letter to US Senator John Warner in an attempt to help exonerate McVay. In the years immediately after the war, he commanded a repatriation ship that brought Japanese servicemen from various locations in the Pacific Ocean back to Japan. In 1954, he joined Kawasaki Heavy Industries and later became its dockmaster. While at Kawasaki, with his former I-58 crew members, he tested the Japanese Maritime Self-Defense Force's first submarine Oyashio. In the last years of his life, he finally fulfilled his father's wish for him by becoming a Shinto priest at Umemiya Taisha in Kyoto.

Mochitsura Hashimoto Timeline

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1.  BILL says:
26 Feb 2009 12:04:46 PM

Units in class: 3 Boats (I-54, I-56, I-58) Displacement: 2,607 tons surfaced and 3,688 Submerged. Length: 356ft.,Machinery: Two diesels with 4,700shp,driving two shafts, electric motors with 1,200shp. Speed: 17.75kts surfaced 6.5kt. submerged Operating depth: 330ft., Range:21,000nm,Crew:94, Armament: Eight 21in bow torpedo tubs with 20 torpedos one 5.5in deck gun, one twin 25mm anti-aircraft gun I-58 Survived the war to be scuttled in April 1946.

2.  BILL says:
26 Feb 2009 12:19:05 PM

The Japanese devloped different designs during the war,and never had a standard design adapted for mass production. During the war they added 126 submarines to their fleet, making a total of 190 used during the war. 129 submarines were lost, 70 to surface forces,19 to submarines, 18 to air attack, and 22 others to unknown or various causes. Japanese submarines sunk 185 merchant ships. Allied warships lost were two carriers, two cruisers and ten smaller ships.