Naokuni Nomura

was an admiral in the Imperial Japanese Navy, and briefly served as Navy Minister in the 1940s.

Biography

Nomura was born in Hioki, Kagoshima Prefecture. He graduated from the 35th class of the Imperial Japanese Naval Academy on 20 November 1907, ranked 43rd out of 172 cadets. He served his midshipman tour on the cruisers and . After commissioning to ensign on 25 December 1908, he was assigned to the destroyers and . After completing naval artillery and basic torpedo training, he was assigned to the battleship , and was promoted to sub-lieutenant on 1 December 1910.

Nomura subsequently served on a large number of vessels in the early Japanese navy, including the gunboat , cruiser , the gunboat and cruiser .

Promoted to lieutenant on 1 December 1913, he was assigned to the destroyer Yayoi, followed by the destroyers , and his first command, the destroyer . Nomura was promoted to lieutenant commander on 1 December 1919. He graduated from the Naval Staff College with honors in 1920. He subsequently served in a number of staff positions, including that of naval attaché to Germany from August 1922 to September 1924. After his return to Japan, he was promoted to commander on 1 December 1924. He returned to Japan on the U-boat , which was presented to Japan by Adolf Hitler and commissioned into the Imperial Japanese Navy as the .

After his return to Japan, Nomura was briefly commander in chief of the Kure Naval District. On 1 March 1944, he was promoted to admiral.

He served as Naval Minister in the cabinet of Prime Minister Hideki Tōjō for only five days, 17–22 July 1944.

In the final stages of the Pacific War, he served as commander in chief of the Yokosuka Naval District and of the Maritime Escort Fleet. He entered the reserves on 15 October 1945 and died at the age of 88 in 1973.

Nomura was the center of a controversy in 1971, when he headed a group of Japanese war veterans in an attempt to recover the destroyer after it had been sold for scrap by the Republic of China Navy. He only managed to recover the steering wheel.