Ships
- IJN Kiyoshimo Captain from 16 May 1944
Lieutenant Commander Isamu Miyazaki took command of the Imperial Japanese Navy destroyer Kiyoshimo on 16 May 1944, as the ship entered service. She was a new fleet destroyer of the Yūgumo class, completed late in the war with guns and torpedoes for a surface action and a growing battery of anti-aircraft guns.
Her first months were spent working up. Miyazaki drilled the crew in home waters, then took Kiyoshimo south to the fleet anchorage at Lingga Roads, near Singapore, where Japan was holding its remaining heavy ships for a counterstroke against the next American landing.
That sortie came in October 1944. Miyazaki sailed with Vice Admiral Takeo Kurita’s First Striking Force, bound for Leyte. On 24 October, in the Sibuyan Sea, American carrier aircraft struck the formation through the day and sank the battleship Musashi. Kiyoshimo stayed with the force, passed San Bernardino Strait in the night, and was off Samar on 25 October when Kurita’s ships met American escort carriers and their screen. She came out of that fight with the retiring force.
In December the campaign moved on to Mindoro. The navy sent cruisers and destroyers against the American beachhead there. On 26 December 1944, off the island, American aircraft found Kiyoshimo, slowed her, and set her on fire. A United States motor torpedo boat then hit the damaged destroyer with a torpedo, and she sank. Other ships of the Japanese force took off part of her crew.
Miyazaki’s command of Kiyoshimo ran from 16 May 1944 through the whole of her short life at sea: training, the passage through Leyte Gulf, and the Mindoro operation that ended with her loss. In that half year he commanded one of the last fleet destroyers Japan put into service.