Hiroyoshi Nishizawa
pilot for the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service during World War II (1920–1944)
Lieutenant Junior Grade Hiroyoshi Nishizawa (西澤 広義, Nishizawa Hiroyoshi; January 27, 1920 – October 26, 1944) was a Japanese naval aviator and an ace of the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service during World War II. Nishizawa was known to his colleagues as 'the Devil' for his breathtaking, brilliant, and unpredictable aerobatics and superb control of his aircraft while in combat. He was a member of the Tainan Kōkūtai's famous "clean up trio" with fellow aces Saburō Sakai and Toshio Ōta and would see action in the New Guinea campaign as well as in the aerial battles over Guadalcanal and over the Solomon Islands. He was killed in 1944 during the Philippines Campaign while aboard an IJN transport aircraft. It is possible that he was the most successful Japanese fighter ace of the war, reportedly telling his last CO that he had achieved a tally of 86 or 87 aerial victories- post war he was linked with scores of 147 or 103, but both of these scores have been considered inaccurate.
Early life
Hiroyoshi Nishizawa was born 27 January 1920 in a mountain village in the Nagano Prefecture, the fifth son of Mikiji and Miyoshi Nishizawa. His father was the manager of a sake brewery. Hiroyoshi graduated from higher elementary school and then began to work in a textile factory.
In June 1936, a poster caught his eye, an appeal for volunteers to join the Yokaren (flight reserve enlistee training program). Nishizawa applied and qualified as a student pilot in Class Otsu No. 7 of the Japanese Navy Air Force (JNAF).
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Hiroyoshi Nishizawa” as pilot for the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service during World War II (1920–1944). Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The subject matters to the history & society register because the source frames it as pilot for the Imperial Japanese Navy Air Service during World War II (1920–1944). Its deeper value depends on whether names, dates, institutions and citations support that framing.
Contemporary correspondence, administrative files and participant testimony can test how later narratives organized the event or institution. The source revision retrieved here is dated Jul 1, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q715464. 1 of 1 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1920, 1944 and 1936.
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This entry incorporates text from “Hiroyoshi Nishizawa” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.