Ships
- IJN Haruna Captain from 25 January 1944
Kazue Shigenaga was born on 2 January 1898 and was educated at the Naval Academy. He graduated in November 1918, fifth among 124 classmates, and was appointed a midshipman on 21 November. His first ship was the old cruiser Adzuma. In 1919 he served in the cruisers Aso and Yakumo, and on 1 August of that year he was promoted ensign.
He entered the Naval Staff College A-course in December 1928 and was promoted lieutenant commander in November 1929. Duty then took him to the battleship Ise, the light cruisers Kiso and Asama, an instructor's billet with the Yokosuka sailor corps, and an adjutant's desk in the Navy Ministry. Promoted commander in November 1934, he served on the staff of the 11th Squadron, became executive officer of the heavy cruiser Mikuma in December 1937, and in November 1938 joined the staff of Battleship Division 3, the formation of fast battleships to which Haruna belonged. He was promoted captain on 15 November 1939.
His first work as captain was supervision of construction and ordnance in the navy's shipbuilding organization. From March 1940 he was on the staff of the Hanshin Naval Force, the command responsible for the Osaka-Kobe coast, and from October 1940 on the staff of the Second Naval District. In June 1942, with the war well underway, he was assigned to the staff of the First Southern Expeditionary Fleet. Ten days later he took command of the light cruiser Kashii. On 20 January 1943 he moved to the heavy cruiser Chikuma, and he remained her commanding officer for a year.
On 25 January 1944 Shigenaga became captain of the battleship Haruna, then refitting at Sasebo after her return from Truk. He relieved Nobuei Morishita, who went on to command the battleship Yamato. Earlier in the war the same ship had been commanded by Tamotsu Takama and then by Keishi Ishii. The yard work traded part of the old secondary battery for more antiaircraft guns. At the end of February Haruna ran trials in the western Inland Sea with her sister Kongo. On 8 March Battleship Division 3 sailed south with the carrier Zuikaku and the cruiser Mogami, and on 14 March it anchored at Lingga Roads, south of Singapore.
On 18 March Shigenaga went aboard the battleship Nagato for a briefing and left a gift of sake with Vice Admiral Matome Ugaki. Haruna trained at Lingga through the spring, with a short call at Singapore. On 11 May she sailed with Vice Admiral Jisaburo Ozawa's Mobile Fleet to Tawi-Tawi, where she joined the vanguard under Vice Admiral Takeo Kurita, alongside Yamato, Musashi, and the light carriers of Carrier Division 3. When American troops landed on Saipan, the fleet left Tawi-Tawi on 13 June.
In the Battle of the Philippine Sea, Haruna screened those light carriers in Kurita's van. On 20 June 1944 American carrier aircraft struck her after deck, and flooding reached a powder magazine. She was docked at Kure for repair and for a further increase in light antiaircraft guns, and portholes were blanked off as part of the work meant to keep her afloat under bomb damage. The repair left a lasting fault: at high speed the stern vibrated, and she could be driven at only about 26 or 27 knots. In August she went south again to Lingga.
In October she sortied with Kurita's First Diversion Attack Force for the counterattack on the American landing at Leyte. Shigenaga was promoted rear admiral on 15 October 1944, still in command of the ship, only days before the battle. On 24 October, in the Sibuyan Sea, near misses from carrier bombs damaged Haruna, and she stayed with the force. The next morning, off Samar, she took part in the chase of the American escort carriers and their screening destroyers. The vibration in her stern kept her from keeping up with Kongo. Shigenaga left Haruna on 20 December 1944, and Masatake Yoshimura took command. Under Yoshimura the battleship was sunk by American carrier aircraft at Kure on 28 July 1945. Shigenaga had already gone ashore. In January 1945 he became vice chief of staff of the Takao Guard District on Taiwan, and he held that post through the end of the war. He retired on 30 April 1946 and died on 1 March 1964.