Ships
- IJN Shokaku Captain from 17 November 1943 · In command when she was lost, 19 June 1944
Hiroshi Matsubara was a captain in the Imperial Japanese Navy who took command of the fleet carrier Shokaku on 17 November 1943, late in the Pacific War, and remained her commanding officer until she was lost on 19 June 1944.
Before that appointment he had already served at sea through the years when Japanese carrier aviation expanded and then began to lose the initiative. The record of his career places him among the officers who moved from staff and aviation duties into command of a first-line carrier at a moment when the fleet was being rebuilt after heavy losses in 1942 and 1943.
He assumed Shokaku after the ship had returned from the fighting of 1942, including the Coral Sea, the Eastern Solomons, and Santa Cruz, and after a long period of repair and training. Under his command the carrier worked up a new air group and joined the First Carrier Division as the Navy prepared for a decisive fleet action.
In June 1944 Shokaku sailed with the Mobile Fleet for the operation known afterward as the Battle of the Philippine Sea. Rear Admiral Takatsugu Jojima flew his flag in the carrier as commander of the division, and Masafumi Arima was among the senior aviation officers connected with the carrier force in that period. On 19 June, while American submarines closed the formation west of the Marianas, Shokaku was hit by torpedoes from USS Cavalla.
The hits started fires among fueled and armed aircraft. Gasoline vapor spread through the ship, and a violent explosion followed. Shokaku sank that afternoon with heavy loss of life. Matsubara went down with the carrier he had commanded since November 1943.
His name is remembered with the last cruise of Shokaku, one of the two carriers that opened the Pacific War at Pearl Harbor and that survived until the great carrier battle of June 1944.