Pacific ships

IJN · Lieutenant Commander

Iritono, Atsuo

All captains
AI

Ships

Atsuo Iritono, a lieutenant commander in the Imperial Japanese Navy, commanded three destroyers in succession during the Pacific War. He became captain of Hatakaze on 15 October 1940, of Hatsushimo on 27 November 1942, and of Akigumo on 11 November 1943. He was still in command of Akigumo when she was lost on 11 April 1944, and he went down with her.

Hatakaze was a Kamikaze-class destroyer completed in 1924, already long in service when Iritono joined her. At the start of the war she belonged to Destroyer Division 5, in Destroyer Squadron 5 of the Third Fleet, and sailed from Mako in the Pescadores with the force that opened the campaign in the northern Philippines. In December 1941 she screened the landing at Aparri. Through the first months of 1942 she escorted troopships to Singora in Malaya and to French Indochina, then joined the invasion of Java. On 1 March 1942 she took part in the Battle of Sunda Strait. Iritono left her on 27 November 1942.

He took Hatsushimo the same day, following Satoru Kohama. The Hatsuharu-class destroyer spent his year in command in northern waters. In July 1943 she was with the force, under the First Torpedo Squadron, sent to bring the garrison off Kiska. On 26 July, in heavy fog, Hatsushimo was in a collision that also involved the light cruiser Abukuma, the destroyers Wakaba and Naganami, and the coastal-defense ship Kunashiri. The damage left her too slow for the evacuation, and she was given the tanker Nippon Maru to escort while other ships took the soldiers off the island. After patch repairs at Paramushir she returned to convoy duty in the Kuriles. On 11 November 1943 he turned the ship over to Kouji Takigawa.

The same day he relieved Masahira Soma as captain of Akigumo, a late ship of the Kagero class. Between 16 and 21 November he escorted the carriers Zuiho, Chuyo, and Unyo from Yokosuka to Truk. On 23 November Akigumo left Truk with Yamagumo, Maikaze, and Nowaki to screen the tankers Nippon Maru and Toa Maru toward Kwajalein by way of Ponape. Two days out, north of Ponape, the submarine Searaven torpedoed Toa Maru. Akigumo hunted with twenty-seven depth charges, then stood by the tanker. Toa Maru sank with thirteen of her crew lost, and Akigumo took aboard 117 survivors before returning to Truk on 26 November.

By the spring of 1944 the destroyer was carrying stores as well as escorting. From 1 to 4 April she moved equipment for the 601st Air Group toward Davao and came under air attack on the way. On 9 April she sailed for Singapore with Kiyokawa Maru. On the afternoon of 11 April, scouting ahead of that ship about thirty miles southeast of Zamboanga, she was hit by two torpedoes from the submarine Redfin, near 6 degrees 43 minutes north and 122 degrees 23 minutes east. Akigumo heeled about forty-five degrees. Iritono ordered the crew to abandon ship, then shut himself in his cabin. She capsized and sank by the stern within a few minutes. One hundred thirty-seven men, the captain among them, were lost. Eight officers and 105 men were saved, a number of them seriously wounded.