Ships
- IJN Amagiri Captain from 1 March 1944
Lieutenant Commander Gen Yoshinaga of the Imperial Japanese Navy became captain of the destroyer Amagiri on 1 March 1944. He relieved Kohei Hanami, who was too ill to remain in command. Amagiri was a Fubuki-class destroyer, built at Ishikawajima and completed in November 1930. By the time Yoshinaga came aboard she had already served more than two years of the Pacific War in southern waters, and his own tour in her lasted less than two months.
Earlier captains of the same ship included Giichiro Nakahara, from December 1937 to September 1940, and Buichi Ashida, from September 1940 to May 1943. Hanami, who followed Ashida, took her through the Solomon Islands. In the early hours of 2 August 1943 she rammed and cut in two the American motor torpedo boat PT-109 in Blackett Strait, south of Kolombangara. She fought at Kula Gulf, got clear of American destroyers at Cape St. George in November 1943, and on 7 December collided near Kavieng with the destroyer Akikaze, which sheared away part of her bow. That damage sent her home to Kure. The repair lasted into the new year, and she was ready to go south again when Yoshinaga reported as captain.
On the day he assumed command, Amagiri left the Third Torpedo Squadron and joined the Nineteenth Destroyer Division with Uranami and Shikinami, for duty with the Sixteenth Squadron in the Southwest Area Fleet. He took her to sea at once on escort work. Early in March she covered the Mota-07 convoy from the Moji area to Kagoshima, sweeping for submarines on the way, and reached Takao on Formosa on 9 March. On 13 March she sailed with the Hi-53 convoy and brought it into Singapore on the 18th. For a crew just out of the Solomons, the passage was a quieter kind of war.
Through April Amagiri screened the heavy cruiser Aoba and the light cruiser Oi while they shifted troops among Balikpapan, Tarakan, and Palembang. On 20 April she left Singapore with those two cruisers on a transport run bound for Davao.
In the early afternoon of 23 April 1944, about fifty-five miles south of Balikpapan in the Makassar Strait, Amagiri struck a mine in waters that American aircraft had mined. From the bridge the blast looked at first like a submarine torpedo, and Yoshinaga had the lookouts search for a periscope. Men inside the ship had been thrown upward, which pointed to a magnetic mine going off under the hull. She listed to starboard. The shock had warped the watertight doors so they would not seal, and the flooding could not be checked. Fire took hold and spread to oil on the water alongside. The torpedoes were jettisoned, the anthem Kimigayo was played, and abandon ship was ordered. The crew jumped from the stern. Chief engineer Shigeru Nishinosono, a former student of Hanami, stayed aboard and was lost with the ship. Amagiri remained afloat for about two hours. The cruisers in company took off the survivors, Yoshinaga among them. On 10 June 1944 the Navy removed her from the register of active ships.