Ships
- IJN Hamakaze Captain from 20 September 1943
Kazue Maekawa was a lieutenant commander in the Imperial Japanese Navy. On 20 September 1943 he took command of the destroyer Hamakaze, a Kagerō-class fleet destroyer completed in June 1941. By the time he came aboard she had already spent two years with the Combined Fleet.
Hamakaze carried six 12.7-centimeter guns and eight 61-centimeter torpedo tubes, and she had been built to run with carriers and battleships. In Maekawa's time that work went on under harder conditions. American submarines and carrier raids were driving the fleet out of Truk and the other forward anchorages, and a destroyer spent long stretches screening, escorting, and shifting base. She served in Destroyer Division 17 with Isokaze, Urakaze, and Tanikaze.
In the late spring of 1944 the Mobile Fleet assembled at Tawi-Tawi to meet the American advance into the Marianas. On 9 June the submarine Harder sank Tanikaze in those waters. Hamakaze went to sea with the fleet for the Battle of the Philippine Sea on 19 and 20 June. Aircraft decided the battle, and the Japanese carrier air groups were shattered. The destroyers screened the ships that fell back on Japan and the southern fueling bases.
In October 1944 Hamakaze sailed with Vice Admiral Takeo Kurita's battleship force against the landings at Leyte. On 24 October, in the Sibuyan Sea, carrier aircraft sank the battleship Musashi and damaged other ships in the formation. Kurita turned away and then reversed course, passed San Bernardino Strait during the night, and on 25 October met American escort carriers and their destroyer screen off Samar. Hamakaze came through the gunfire and the air attacks and stayed with the force on the retirement.
Through the winter the remaining heavy ships lay mostly in the Inland Sea, short of fuel and of air cover. Early in April 1945 the navy sent the battleship Yamato against the American fleet off Okinawa, with the light cruiser Yahagi and eight destroyers. Hamakaze was one of the eight. The formation left its anchorage on 6 April, passed the Bungo Strait, and headed into the East China Sea on a surface attack planned with almost no fighter protection.
On the morning of 7 April, southwest of Kyushu, carrier aircraft found the ships and attacked in waves. Bombs and aerial torpedoes hit Hamakaze. She broke up and sank, and Maekawa was lost with her. The same day's attacks also sank Yamato, Yahagi, Isokaze, Asashimo, and Kasumi. The destroyers still afloat, Yukikaze among them, moved through the wreckage and took survivors aboard.