Qualla: Japanese cruiser Jintsu

Japanese cruiser Jintsu: Introduction

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Kure Naval Arsenal, Public domain. Captain Keiji Mizushiro killed himself on 24 August 1927 because the ship under his command had just killed seventeen men. During a night exercise off Jizosaki Lighthouse in Shimane Prefecture, the light cruiser Jintsu rammed and sank a Japanese destroyer. Mizushiro's suicide - an expression of an honor code that would thread through the decades that followed - was the first real entry on his ship's long record. Jintsu would spend the next sixteen years sailing with the Imperial Japanese Navy through the invasion of China, the invasion of the Philippines, the Battle of the Java Sea, Midway, the Eastern Solomons, and the long bloodletting of the Solomon Islands campaigns. She would serve as a flagship for admirals, launch torpedoes at Allied fleets, and finally die on a moonless night in July 1943 when she switched on her searchlights and showed American gunners exactly where to shoot.

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Image: Kure Naval Arsenal | Public domain

Japanese cruiser Jintsu: Named for a River

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Public domain. Jintsu was laid down at Kawasaki Shipyards in Kobe on 4 August 1922, launched on 8 December 1923, and completed on 21 July 1925. She was named for the Jinzu River, which runs through Gifu and Toyama prefectures in central Japan - a naming convention that gave Imperial Japanese wa...

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Image: Public domain

Japanese cruiser Jintsu: China, Philippines, Java Sea

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Nacht Eule, CC0. After the collision that ended Captain Mizushiro, Jintsu was rebuilt at Maizuru with a flared bow replacing her raked one, and then went to work. In 1928 she covered Japanese landings during the Jinan incident in Shandong, then based out of Qingdao. From 1929 to 1937 she patrolle...

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Image: Nacht Eule | CC0

Japanese cruiser Jintsu: The Tokyo Express

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Public domain. After Midway - where Jintsu escorted transports that got bombed but never sank - she was reassigned in July 1942 to the newly formed Japanese 8th Fleet under Vice Admiral Gunichi Mikawa, based on the Solomons problem. On 16 August she left Truk commanding a major reinforcement fo...

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Image: Public domain

Japanese cruiser Jintsu: The Searchlight That Killed Her

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit National Museum of the U.S. Navy, Public domain. On 13 July 1943, Jintsu was the flagship of Rear Admiral Shunji Isaki, running what the Japanese called a transport mission and the Americans called the Tokyo Express. She had departed Rabaul at 0330 with a force of destroyers and destroyer-transports carrying 1,200 troops to rei...

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Image: National Museum of the U.S. Navy | Public domain

Japanese cruiser Jintsu: Found Again

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit 大隅洋行, Public domain. Jintsu was removed from the Japanese navy list on 10 September 1943 - a bureaucratic farewell two months after the sea had already taken her. For seventy-six years she lay lost. Then on 26 April 2019, the research vessel Petrel, part of the late Paul Allen's deep-ocean exploratio...

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Image: 大隅洋行 | Public domain