Ships
- IJN Haguro Captain from 1 December 1943
Kaju Sugiura was born on 5 May 1896 in Aichi Prefecture and spent his career in the Imperial Japanese Navy. He graduated from the Naval Academy in November 1918 with the 46th class and was commissioned an ensign in August 1919, joining the battleship Fuso. Torpedo duty became his specialty. He completed the advanced course at the Torpedo School, served as torpedo officer in the destroyer Yunagi, and later taught at the school.
In November 1930 he finished the Naval War College course. Promoted to commander the next month, he took command of the destroyer Tade, and in December 1931 he moved to the destroyer Uzuki. The years that followed mixed classrooms with staff work. He instructed at the torpedo and gunnery schools and served on the staffs of destroyer squadrons. On 20 October 1939 he became commander of Destroyer Division 5. In August 1940 he joined the staff of the Second China Expeditionary Fleet.
He was promoted to captain on 15 November 1940, and on 15 December he was given Destroyer Division 17. Through the winter and spring of 1941 the division worked the south China coast and the waters off southern French Indochina, watching merchant traffic, guarding Japanese ships, cooperating with army units, and keeping a presence while the ceasefire between Thailand and France took hold. He still held that command when the Pacific War began. On 25 April 1942 he went ashore as deputy head of the Torpedo School. On 20 February 1943 he returned to sea as commander of Destroyer Division 4.
That command put him over the Japanese destroyers at Vella Gulf on 6 August 1943. The four ships were Hagikaze, Arashi, Kawakaze, and Shigure, running troops toward Kolombangara. The ship he stood on is not known. Six American destroyers under Frederick Moosbrugger closed by radar and fired twenty-four torpedoes. Hagikaze, Arashi, and Kawakaze were sunk. Shigure got away. More than a thousand Japanese sailors and soldiers were lost. Sugiura survived.
He left the Solomons that autumn. From 17 November 1943 he was attached to the Yokosuka Naval District, and on 1 December 1943 he became captain of the heavy cruiser Haguro, a Myoko-class ship armed with ten 20-centimeter guns. He kept her with the fleet in southern waters. By the spring of 1945 Haguro was one of the last Japanese heavy cruisers still able to sail from Singapore.
On 1 May 1945 he was promoted to rear admiral and remained in command of Haguro. Later that month the cruiser left Singapore with the destroyer Kamikaze to carry supplies toward the Andaman Islands. On the night of 15 May, in the Strait of Malacca off Penang, five British destroyers of the 26th Destroyer Flotilla under Manley Power intercepted the pair. Torpedoes and gunfire sank Haguro early on 16 May 1945. Kamikaze was damaged and got clear, then returned to recover survivors. More than nine hundred men were killed, Sugiura among them, along with Vice Admiral Shintaro Hashimoto, the senior officer embarked in the cruiser. About three hundred and twenty men were saved. The navy promoted Sugiura to vice admiral after his death.