Qualla: Japanese cruiser Kako https://qualla.com/japanese-cruiser-kako en-us © 2026 Bendyline Mon, 20 Jul 2026 10:21:29 GMT Qualla serial false Qualla support@bendyline.com yes https://qualla.com/_m/r/r/s/1/japanese-cruiser-kako-wp/hero-small.webp Qualla: Japanese cruiser Kako https://qualla.com/japanese-cruiser-kako Japanese cruiser Kako: Introduction https://qualla.com/japanese-cruiser-kako/ Photo credit Imperial Japanese Navy, Public domain. On the morning of 10 August 1942, Kako was sixty-eight nautical miles from a cup of coffee in Kavieng harbor. The Imperial Japanese Navy heavy cruiser had spent the previous night helping to execute one of the most complete naval victories of the war - the First Battle of Savo Island, where four Allied heavy cruisers had been sunk or scuttled in roughly half an hour of point-blank gunfire - and now she was steaming home to New Ireland with her three sisters, their decks scorched, their ammunition low, and their crews beginning to believe they had gotten away with it. At 08:10 a spread of four torpedoes from an old American submarine found Kako's hull. Within five minutes she rolled over on her starboard side. When seawater hit her boilers, she exploded. Sixty-eight of her men did not come home. Captain Takahashi and 649 others were pulled from the oil-slicked sea by Aoba, Furutaka, and Kinugasa, and the three remaining cruisers continued into Kavieng carrying their survivors, their dead, and the news that the night's victory had come with a bill after all.

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Image: Imperial Japanese Navy | Public domain

]]> Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/r/r/s/1/japanese-cruiser-kako-wp/rrs1-japanese-cruiser-kako-intro.mp3 0:06 1 full Japanese cruiser Kako: Born on the Inland Sea https://qualla.com/japanese-cruiser-kako/ Photo credit Imperial Japanese Navy, Public domain. Kako was launched into a different world. She was completed at Kawasaki Shipbuilding in Kobe on 20 July 1926, named - per Japanese naval tradition - after the Kako River that runs through Hyogo Prefecture. With her sister Furutaka she represented Japan's first generation of high-...

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Image: Imperial Japanese Navy | Public domain

]]> Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/r/r/s/1/japanese-cruiser-kako-wp/rrs1-japanese-cruiser-kako-born-on-the-inland-sea.mp3 0:06 2 full Japanese cruiser Kako: The First Nine Months of War https://qualla.com/japanese-cruiser-kako/ Photo credit Imperial Japanese Navy, Public domain. When the bombs fell on Pearl Harbor, Kako was half an ocean away, providing support for the Japanese invasion of Guam. Her cruiser division, the Sixth, fought at Wake - first the failed assault in December, then the successful second landing - and returned to Truk in the Caroline...

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Image: Imperial Japanese Navy | Public domain

]]> Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/r/r/s/1/japanese-cruiser-kako-wp/rrs1-japanese-cruiser-kako-the-first-nine-months-of-war.mp3 0:06 3 full Japanese cruiser Kako: A Night Off Savo https://qualla.com/japanese-cruiser-kako/ Photo credit Imperial Japanese Navy, Public domain. The First Battle of Savo Island, fought in the dark hours of 8-9 August 1942 in the waters between Guadalcanal and Florida Island, was a catastrophe for the Allies. Japanese cruisers including Kako caught the American and Australian screening force off guard and sank four heavy c...

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Image: Imperial Japanese Navy | Public domain

]]> Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/r/r/s/1/japanese-cruiser-kako-wp/rrs1-japanese-cruiser-kako-a-night-off-savo.mp3 0:06 4 full Japanese cruiser Kako: Five Minutes Off Simbari https://qualla.com/japanese-cruiser-kako/ Photo credit Imperial Japanese Navy, Public domain. USS S-44 was an old boat, commissioned in 1925, not much faster than the big cruisers she was chasing but, that morning, in the right place. Off Simbari Island, with Kako nearly home, four torpedoes ran true. Two hit the cruiser forward, one amidships, one aft. Within five minute...

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Image: Imperial Japanese Navy | Public domain

]]> Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/r/r/s/1/japanese-cruiser-kako-wp/rrs1-japanese-cruiser-kako-five-minutes-off-simbari.mp3 0:06 5 full Japanese cruiser Kako: What the Sea Keeps https://qualla.com/japanese-cruiser-kako/ Photo credit 屋根裏の提督, CC BY-SA 4.0. Kako rests today in roughly 40 meters of water off Simbari Island, in the waters between New Ireland and the Papua New Guinea mainland - not far from where she helped put a generation of Allied ships on the bottom a few hours earlier. The men who went down with her were sons, hus...

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Image: 屋根裏の提督 | CC BY-SA 4.0

]]> Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT https://qualla.com/_m/r/r/s/1/japanese-cruiser-kako-wp/rrs1-japanese-cruiser-kako-what-the-sea-keeps.mp3 0:06 6 full