Ships
- IJN Shiratsuyu Captain from 25 April 1942
- IJN Kazagumo Captain from 14 September 1943
Kanematsu Hashimoto, a lieutenant commander of the Imperial Japanese Navy, spent the central years of the Pacific War as a destroyer captain. On 25 April 1942 he took command of Shiratsuyu, lead ship of her class, in succession to Nagahide Sugitani. She was then serving in Destroyer Division 27.
In May 1942 Shiratsuyu went with the carrier striking force to the Battle of the Coral Sea. In June she sailed with the battleships for the Midway operation and was turned back before the carriers fought. The division shifted to the Fourth Torpedo Squadron in July. After American raiders struck Makin, Shiratsuyu and Shigure left Truk on 18 August with a naval landing force and put the men ashore at Makin on 21 August. On 2 September they took part in the occupation of Apamama. Over the weeks that followed, the two destroyers carried supplies into Guadalcanal on seven runs.
Before dawn on 25 October 1942, Shiratsuyu entered Lunga anchorage with Akatsuki and Ikazuchi while Japanese troops attacked the airfield ashore. The three ships damaged the old American destroyer Zane, then serving as a fast minesweeper, and sank the tug Seminole and the patrol craft YP-284. The report sent in afterward claimed a light cruiser and a destroyer. On the night of 12–13 November, during the naval battle off Guadalcanal, Destroyer Division 27 patrolled between the island and the Russell Islands while the heavier ships fought closer in. On the 13th Shiratsuyu joined the screen around the crippled battleship Hiei and took light damage from strafing. That afternoon the division was ordered to finish Hiei with torpedoes. A cancellation reached Shigure in the last moments before the tubes were fired, and it is unclear whether any torpedo was launched.
Late in November Shiratsuyu was sent on the New Guinea runs. She left Rabaul on the night of 23 November with four other destroyers, bound for Lae. American aircraft caught them after dark on the 24th and left Hayashio burning. After the survivors had been taken off, Shiratsuyu sank the wreck with gunfire, and the landing was abandoned. On 28 November she sailed again, this time with Yugumo, Makigumo, and Kazagumo, for Buna. Bombers found the group by day on the 29th. A direct hit and near misses wrecked the bow of Shiratsuyu and came close to breaking her hull. Six of her men were killed, Makigumo was shaken by a near miss, and the transport was called off. Makigumo took the soldiers off Shiratsuyu, then started back with Kazagumo. Shiratsuyu reached Rabaul that evening under escort and lay alongside the light cruiser Tenryu, unable to anchor.
Patched at Rabaul, she reached Truk on 22 December, and the repair ship Akashi carried on the work. On 16 February 1943 she left for Japan with the damaged destroyer Nowaki. Heavy weather opened cracks in the welded patches, and on the 19th both ships put into Saipan. Nowaki was sent ahead. Shiratsuyu sailed alone on 25 February and entered Sasebo on 2 March. At Nagasaki the ruined bow was cut away and rebuilt, and the job lasted into July. Hashimoto remained captain through that long repair. On 14 September 1943 he turned Shiratsuyu over to Kuro Matsuda and the same day became captain of Kazagumo, relieving Masayoshi Yoshida.
From 20 September Kazagumo, a Yugumo-class ship of Destroyer Division 10, worked under Destroyer Squadron 3. She covered the evacuation of Kolombangara on the nights of 28 September and 2 October. The withdrawal was finished with only small clashes at sea. On 6 October she left Rabaul with a night-attack group for Vella Lavella, steaming astern of Akigumo and Isokaze and ahead of Yugumo. American destroyers opened fire first. Yugumo was sunk under heavy gunfire after one of her torpedoes hit Chevalier and broke the American line. A shell wrecked the second turret of Kazagumo, killed one man, and wounded several others. With Akigumo and Isokaze she fired torpedoes toward Selfridge and O'Bannon, but the range was long and those torpedoes missed. She took aboard part of the crew of Yugumo. Other men from that ship were picked up by the Americans. The loss left the division with Kazagumo and Akigumo.
The two destroyers left the Solomons command on 7 October. Kazagumo made a troop run to Tuluvu, then joined the Third Fleet at Eniwetok. At the end of the month she and Onami carried men and gear from Truk to Kavieng for the air offensive against the landing on Bougainville, sailing on 31 October and arriving the next day. She was still on that duty when the night battle off Empress Augusta Bay was fought, and she entered Rabaul afterward for the counter-landings at Torokina. Carrier raids on 5 and 11 November mauled the ships gathered in the harbor. Kazagumo returned to Truk, moved toward the Marshalls as the fight for Tarawa began, and in December screened Yamato and Shokaku to Japan, reaching Yokosuka on 17 December with Akigumo and Yamagumo. On 21 December the division commander moved from Kazagumo to Akigumo. In the Ishikawajima yard she was repaired, given more antiaircraft guns, and fitted with radar.
By the spring of 1944 the division was down to fleet escort work. An American submarine sank Akigumo on 11 April, and Kazagumo continued with Asagumo. Early in June the pair covered the battleship Fuso, and then the heavy cruisers Myoko and Haguro, during Operation Kon, the attempt to reinforce Biak. Bombers found the force and the operation was stopped, then started again, and the big ships were pulled back while a smaller destroyer group tried the landing. On 7 June Myoko and Haguro, with Kazagumo and Asagumo, were ordered out of Davao for Bacan, off Halmahera.
They cleared Davao late that night. The American submarine Hake was waiting at the mouth of the gulf. In the early hours of 8 June her torpedoes struck Kazagumo to port, amidships and aft. Torpedoes still aboard exploded and tore the hull open. The destroyer was stopped and sank shortly afterward, near 6°03' north, 125°57' east. Hibiki and Akishimo, on guard in the gulf, came out with Asagumo. One hundred thirty-six survivors were put aboard Akishimo and taken to Davao. The rest of the company was lost, among them Shizuo Akazawa, a captain, who commanded Destroyer Division 10 and was embarked in Kazagumo. He was promoted to rear admiral after his death. Hashimoto's appointment as captain was closed on 15 June 1944, and Kazagumo was removed from the Navy list on 10 July.