Ships
- IJN Shimakaze Captain from 10 May 1943
Commander Hiromu Hirose of the Imperial Japanese Navy was the first captain of the destroyer Shimakaze. He joined her before she was finished, appointed on 20 March 1943 to take charge of the crew fitting her out at Maizuru Naval Arsenal. On 10 May 1943 the arsenal completed the ship and turned her over to the fleet, and Hirose remained aboard as commanding officer.
He came to that appointment from the destroyer force. He had already captained the destroyer Harusame, and he was in command of Oshio when that ship was lost. The Navy relieved him of Oshio on 15 March 1943. Five days later he reported to Maizuru for the new destroyer still on the ways and in the fitting-out basin.
Shimakaze was a single experimental destroyer, laid down in August 1941 and launched in July 1942, built for very high speed and a torpedo battery heavier than that of a standard fleet destroyer. Spring trials exposed trouble in the cruising machinery, and her completion date slipped to 10 May 1943. Once in service she was assigned to the Eleventh Torpedo Squadron of the First Fleet, the formation that worked up newly completed destroyers. On 10 July 1943 she moved to the Second Torpedo Squadron of the Second Fleet.
Her first operation under Hirose was the evacuation of Kiska in the Aleutians in late July 1943. Shimakaze led the screen covering the ships that went in to lift the garrison, in fog thick enough that her radar was the means of warning the force of American ships. When the decision to go or wait was still open, Hirose advised Rear Admiral Masatomi Kimura, embarked in the light cruiser Abukuma, that the withdrawal had to be made that day, and that he was waiting on the order. The force took the men off and cleared the island.
On 5 October 1943 Hirose turned Shimakaze over to Commander Hiroshi Uwai. The same day he was attached to the headquarters of the First Torpedo Squadron, under Rear Admiral Kimura. Shimakaze stayed with the Second Torpedo Squadron under her new captain. American carrier aircraft sank her in Ormoc Bay on 11 November 1944.