Ships
- IJN Nagatsuki Captain from 15 April 1942
- IJN Wakaba Captain from 1 October 1943 · In command when she was lost, 24 October 1944. He survived
Kanefumi Ninokata was a lieutenant commander in the Imperial Japanese Navy who commanded destroyers through the middle of the Pacific War. On 15 April 1942 he became captain of the Mutsuki-class destroyer Nagatsuki. Before that appointment he had been torpedo officer of the heavy cruiser Suzuya.
Nagatsuki had already taken part in the landings in the Philippines and the Dutch East Indies. On 10 April 1942 she joined the 1st Surface Escort Division of the Southwest Area Fleet, and five days later Ninokata relieved Kazuo Shibayama. His early months in the ship were spent screening convoys in the southern theater.
In 1943 Nagatsuki was carrying troops and supplies along the north coast of New Guinea and through the Solomons. On 30 March she sailed with Fumizuki, Satsuki, and Minazuki, landed about eight hundred soldiers and eighty tons of cargo at Finschhafen, and took about six hundred men back aboard. American bombers damaged the group on the return passage. On 2 April the same four destroyers left Kavieng to try Finschhafen again. Flares fell over them in the Dampier Strait, the landing was abandoned, and the ships turned back. Ninokata left Nagatsuki in June 1943. Tameo Furukawa, appointed on 1 June, was her captain when she was beached and destroyed on 6 July 1943 in the Battle of Kula Gulf.
Ninokata's next ship was the destroyer Sawakaze. On 1 October 1943 he was appointed captain of Wakaba, relieving Nobuyoshi Suetsugu. Masakichi Kuroki had commanded Wakaba from September 1941 until November 1942. The Hatsuharu-class destroyer was completing a refit at Sasebo after a long spell in northern waters. One 127-millimeter gun came off, her 25-millimeter anti-aircraft battery was strengthened, and a Type 22 radar was fitted. She sailed on 16 October, worked patrols and escorts from Ominato until the middle of November, and then joined Hatsuharu and Hatsushimo at Kure in Destroyer Division 21.
Through late 1943 and 1944 the division served with the Combined Fleet. Wakaba escorted the carriers Hiyo, Zuiho, and Unyo on voyages linking Yokosuka, Truk, and Singapore, went back at times to northern patrols, and in the middle of 1944 ran transport trips toward Iwo Jima.
In October 1944 Wakaba, Hatsuharu, and Hatsushimo were ordered south for the Battle of Leyte Gulf with the force under Vice Admiral Kiyohide Shima. They went on to Takao, left on 21 October for Manila, and there landed personnel of the Second Air Fleet. On 23 October they sailed to join Shima. The next day, off the west coast of Panay, aircraft from the American carrier Franklin struck Wakaba with one or two bombs. She sank in about forty-five minutes. Hatsuharu and Hatsushimo took off the survivors, Ninokata and Destroyer Division 21 commander Captain Hisashi Ishii among them, and carried them to Manila. Ninokata's appointment as captain of Wakaba continued until 15 November 1944. On 10 December the navy removed her name from the list.