Ships
- IJN Shikinami Captain from 15 April 1942
- IJN Ariake Captain from 15 July 1943 · In command when she was lost, 28 July 1943
Akifumi Kawahashi was an officer of the Imperial Japanese Navy and a graduate of the 54th class of the Naval Academy. He commanded two destroyers in the Pacific War, in each case as a lieutenant commander, and the navy advanced him to commander after he was killed. On 15 April 1942 he became captain of the destroyer Shikinami. On 15 July 1943 he became captain of the destroyer Ariake, and he was still in command when Ariake was lost on 28 July 1943.
Shikinami was a Fubuki-class destroyer, one of the large ships the navy called the special type. Maizuru Naval Arsenal built her. She was launched in June 1929 and commissioned that December. Kawahashi relieved Juichi Iwagami on 15 April 1942 while the ship was heading back toward Japan from the southern theater. The change of command came during a stop at Cam Ranh Bay, after weeks of escort work moving men and supplies between Saigon, Singapore, and Rangoon.
His first campaign in her was Guadalcanal. On 4 September 1942 Shikinami sailed with Ariake and other destroyers and put more than a thousand soldiers ashore at Taivu Point, east of the American beachhead. On 6 September that group, Shikinami with Ariake, Uranami, and Yudachi, went along the coast in search of an Allied convoy. The ships found no convoy and bombarded Henderson Field instead. In the same early-September fighting Shikinami joined a short gun action that helped sink the American patrol vessel YP-346.
Kawahashi stayed in Shikinami into the summer of 1943. From late February of that year Destroyer Division 19 was attached to the Southwest Area Fleet, and the ship's work settled into escort and patrol duty on the southern routes. He turned her over on 20 June 1943 to Shozo Michiki. Shikinami remained in service for another year. On 12 September 1944 the American submarine Growler torpedoed her east of Hainan and she sank. Tatsuhiko Takahashi, who then commanded her, was killed with most of the crew.
Ariake was the fifth ship of the Hatsuharu class. Kawasaki laid her down at Kobe in January 1933, launched her in September 1934, and the navy commissioned her in March 1935. Her name is the word for the moon still visible at dawn. Kawahashi relieved Shoichi Yoshida on 15 July 1943. Yoshida had been her captain since October 1940, through the first year and a half of the war. The handover found the ship in the New Britain area, and Kawahashi took her back to Rabaul as escort for the light cruiser Nagara.
The new command was already at the front. On 20 July Destroyer Division 27, Ariake's division, passed to Destroyer Squadron 2 of the Second Fleet. On 23 July she was ordered to Rabaul and arrived on 25 July. On 27 July she sailed with the destroyer Mikazuki to land troops at Tuluvu, beside Cape Gloucester on the western end of New Britain.
That night both destroyers grounded on a reef off the cape, near 5°27′ south, 148°25′ east. Ariake worked herself free. She took aboard the soldiers still in Mikazuki and Captain Tsuneo Orita, commander of Destroyer Division 30, finished the run to Tuluvu, and on 28 July turned back to help the stranded ship. While the crews were at that work, United States Army Air Forces B-25 Mitchell bombers attacked. Ariake was hit, caught fire, and sank, with Kawahashi in command. Eight of her men were killed, Kawahashi among them, and eleven were badly wounded. The rest got clear, Orita with them. Survivors from both ships were taken aboard the destroyer Akikaze, and the bombers destroyed Mikazuki as well. Counted together, sixty-three men from the two ships were dead or missing. Kawahashi was promoted to commander after his death.
He had been captain of Ariake from 15 July 1943 until the ship went down on 28 July. The thirteen days closed a destroyer career spent on escorts out of Southeast Asia, on night landings and bombardment off Guadalcanal, and at the end on one troop run along the coast of New Britain.