Ships
- IJN Yugumo Captain from 25 March 1943
Commander Higashi Osako became captain of the Imperial Japanese Navy destroyer Yugumo on 25 March 1943, relieving Shigeo Semba. Yugumo was the lead ship of her class and a unit of Destroyer Division 10, a group of fast fleet destroyers built around a heavy torpedo battery and 127-millimeter guns. Osako held the rank of commander while he had the ship.
In June the division went north. Yugumo left Yokosuka on 10 June 1943 with Kazagumo and Akigumo and reached Paramushiro, in the Kuril Islands, on 13 June. That anchorage was the Navy's forward base toward the Aleutians.
The destroyer later moved into the Solomon Islands campaign and worked from Rabaul. In the last days of September and the first days of October 1943, Yugumo joined the runs that took the Japanese garrison off Kolombangara. Those passages were completed unopposed.
The next evacuation met American ships. On the night of 6 October 1943 a Japanese destroyer force under Rear Admiral Matsuji Ijuin went to Vella Lavella to bring off several hundred soldiers still ashore near Horaniu. USS Selfridge, USS Chevalier, and USS O'Bannon intercepted them. Osako took Yugumo in against that column, opened fire, and launched torpedoes. One torpedo from Yugumo struck USS Chevalier, which was abandoned and later scuttled after USS O'Bannon collided with her in the dark. Yugumo was hit by gunfire and by a torpedo and sank within minutes, about fifteen miles northwest of Vella Lavella, near 7°33′ south, 156°14′ east.
Osako was killed with the ship. The Navy promoted him to captain effective 6 October 1943. Of the crew, 138 were killed. Kazagumo took some survivors out of the water during the action, American motor torpedo boats later picked up seventy-eight men, and about twenty-five more reached Japanese-held shore in a boat. The soldiers on Vella Lavella were brought off, and the night was counted on the Japanese side as a tactical success paid for with Yugumo. The destroyer was removed from the Navy list on 1 December 1943.