World War II Database

Contributor: C. Peter Chen

ww2dbaseCaptain Sukemitsu Ito was a naval aviator with 3,000 hours of flight time over 26 years of service. After some time as a staff officer of naval aviation, he was named the commanding officer of a 6-aircraft seaplane group based in Yokohama in Feb 1942. On 7 Jun 1942, a day after the initial landing, he arrived in the Aleutian island of Kiska with the seaplane group. The group conducted reconnaissance 250 to 300 miles east and southeast of the island; the group also conducted a few bombing missions, including Nazan Bay and Kuluk Bay. The group was withdrawn on 17 Aug 1942. He returned to Japan and became a personnel officer at Naval Air Headquarters in Tokyo. In Jul 1945, he was named the commanding officer of the 724th Air Group at Misawa. After the war, he was interrogated by Captain J. S. Russell of the United States Navy at Tokyo on 9 Oct 1945. Ito revealed that several of his seaplanes were lost due to American attacks, and the overall achievement of his group's reconnaissance efforts were negligible due to frequent bad weather conditions.