Ships
- IJN Makigumo Captain from 14 March 1942 · Taken off by Yugumo when she was scuttled on 2 February 1943
Commander Isamu Fujita became commanding officer of the Imperial Japanese Navy destroyer Makigumo on 14 March 1942, the day the ship was commissioned. He had been with her since 20 December 1941 as the officer in charge of fitting out, and he had previously commanded the destroyer Asashio. Makigumo was a Yugumo-class fleet destroyer, laid down at the Fujinagata yard in Osaka on 23 December 1940 and launched on 5 November 1941. She was built to screen carriers and to fight with guns and the Type 93 oxygen torpedo.
On commissioning she joined Destroyer Division 10, with Kazagumo and Yugumo. Akigumo was added on 10 April, and the division passed to Destroyer Squadron 10 of the First Air Fleet, the navy's carrier force. Fujita's first battle was with that force.
At the Battle of Midway in early June 1942, Makigumo screened Admiral Chuichi Nagumo's carriers. On 5 June the light cruiser Nagara sent her to look at an object in the water to the north. The object was a raft. Fujita's ship took aboard Ensign Frank O'Flaherty and aviation machinist's mate Bruno Gaido, two men of Scouting Squadron 6 from the carrier Enterprise. In the early hours of 6 June, Makigumo and Kazagumo lifted the crew off the burning carrier Hiryu. Going alongside to port, Makigumo caught her mainmast and rigging on the carrier. After the men were off, Fujita was told to scuttle Hiryu. He fired two torpedoes. One ran under the hull. One hit near the bow. He left without seeing her go down. Tanikaze was sent after her. Hiryu sank by the bow around dawn. The sinking is not credited to one ship.
O'Flaherty and Gaido were held on board and questioned. During the return from Midway the ship's company weighted both men and threw them into the sea, and they drowned. Fujita was in command of Makigumo when this was done.
The division afterward fought in the Solomon Islands. Makigumo carried troops toward Guadalcanal and continued to screen the carriers. In the early hours of 27 October 1942, after the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands, she and Akigumo each fired two torpedoes into the abandoned Hornet. She sank at 0135. That sinking is not credited to one ship. The next day Makigumo rescued radioman Michael Glasser of Enterprise. He was taken to Truk and then to Japan, and he lived through the war as a prisoner.
In mid-November 1942 Makigumo was again off Guadalcanal. With Kazagumo she took survivors from the cruiser Kinugasa after that ship was lost. She also ran troops toward Buna, on the New Guinea coast, and late in November near misses from aircraft damaged her during one of those trips.
On the night of 1 February 1943, during the evacuation of Guadalcanal, PT-124 fired at Makigumo. The torpedoes missed. While she turned away she struck a mine aft, between Cape Esperance and Savo. Yugumo came up and tried to tow her. The stern kept settling, and flooding reached another crew space. Fujita ordered the crew off. At 0127 on 2 February Yugumo scuttled her with one torpedo, about 6.7 miles from Savo Island. One man was killed, two were missing, and seven were hurt. Sixteen officers, Fujita among them, and 248 men were taken off. Makigumo was struck from the navy list on 1 March 1943. Fujita's command ended on 20 February 1943.