Early career Abe was born in
Yonezawa city in
Yamagata prefecture in northern Japan. He graduated from the 39th class of the
Imperial Japanese Naval Academy in 1911, with a ranking of 26th out of a class of 148 cadets. As a
midshipman, he served on the
cruiser and
battleship . After his promotion to
ensign on 1 December 1912, he was assigned to the cruisers and , and the battleship . After attending
torpedo school and
naval artillery school, he was promoted to sub-lieutenant and served on the
destroyer , followed by the cruiser during
World War I. However, it does not appear that Abe experienced combat during his tour of duty. After the end of the war, he served in mostly staff positions until he was given his first command on 20 July 1922, the destroyer . He then commanded the destroyer , and was promoted to
lieutenant commander the following year on 1 December 1923. He was captain of the destroyer for one year in 1925. Abe returned to the
Naval Staff College in 1926. He was promoted to
commander on 10 December 1928, and
captain on 1 December 1932. In 1936, he assumed command of the cruiser , and a year later, that of the battleship .
Pacific War On 15 November 1938, Abe was promoted to the rank of
rear admiral. He was thus in command of Cruiser Division 8 (CruDiv8) during the
attack on Pearl Harbor, and the subsequent
Battle of Wake Island. During the
Guadalcanal campaign, as commander of Combat Division 11 (BatDiv 3 and CruDiv 8), he led his ships as the vanguard group at the
Battle of the Eastern Solomons from 23–25 August 1942 and the
Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands from 26–28 October. He was promoted to
vice admiral on 1 November. However, during the
Naval Battle of Guadalcanal on 12–13 November, when assigned to bombard
Henderson Field on Guadalcanal, he broke off his attack after encountering an almost completely crippling 40 minutes of intense combat with
U.S. Navy Rear Admiral Daniel Callaghan's Task Group 67.4 (TG 67.4). Abe lost his
flagship, the battleship , which he ordered scuttled after it had been seriously damaged, as well as two destroyers. Abe himself was wounded – and his chief of staff (Commander Masakane Suzuki) was killed – by
machine-gun fire from the , a destroyer that he sank afterwards. But he still had the undamaged battleship to bombard Henderson Field and enough destroyers to finish off damaged Allied vessels. His failure to aggressively push through his attack against an inferior enemy force created tremendous controversy, and he was relieved of his command by Admiral
Isoroku Yamamoto. Abe was forced to resign from the Imperial Japanese Navy soon afterward in March 1943. He died in 1949. His younger brother, , was also a career navy officer, and was captain of the
aircraft carrier . Abe went down with
Shinano, when she was torpedoed and sunk by the submarine while performing trials. ==Notable positions held==