Pacific ships

IJN · Commander

Koyo, Keiji

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KK

Ships

Commander Keiji Koyo of the Imperial Japanese Navy held two destroyer commands that sit at opposite ends of the Pacific War. He became captain of Harukaze on 15 September 1941 and was relieved on 30 September 1942. On 10 May 1945 he became captain of Yukikaze.

Harukaze, a Kamikaze-class destroyer completed at Maizuru in 1923, was an older and smaller ship than the fleet destroyers of the late 1930s. In Koyo's time she served in Destroyer Division 5 of Destroyer Squadron 5, Third Fleet, working from the Mako guard district in the Pescadores. In December 1941 she screened the landings at Aparri, on the north coast of Luzon, and at Lingayen Gulf. Into the new year she escorted troop convoys bound for Malaya and French Indochina.

The hardest night of that cruise came on 1 March 1942 in the Sunda Strait, during the invasion of Java. Harukaze closed the Allied cruisers Perth and Houston with the Japanese covering force and launched torpedoes. Shells struck back, smashing the bridge, damaging an engine room, and crippling the rudder. Three of her sailors were killed and fifteen were wounded. She stayed afloat and drew off with the squadron. Perth and Houston were lost in that same night action, under fire from several ships.

On 10 March 1942 Harukaze and Destroyer Division 5 shifted to the Southwest Area Fleet. For the rest of Koyo's tour the destroyer escorted troops and supplies out of Singapore toward Penang, Rangoon, Indochina, Rabaul, and New Guinea. He left the ship on 30 September 1942, with that escort work still her duty.

His second command was a very different ship. Yukikaze, a Kagero-class destroyer completed in 1940, had already passed through the main fleet battles of the war and was still afloat. Koyo succeeded Masamichi Terauchi, who had commanded her from September 1943 into May 1945, including the April sortie in which she accompanied the battleship Yamato toward Okinawa. From 10 May 1945 the appointment was his, in the last months of the war, when fuel was short and most of the fleet was held in home waters. Yukikaze was still afloat at the surrender in August 1945. She was later transferred to the Republic of China and served for years under the name Dan Yang.