Ships
- IJN Ikazuchi Captain from 25 October 1943 · In command when she was lost, 13 April 1944
Lieutenant Commander Kunio Ikunaga was captain of the Imperial Japanese Navy destroyer Ikazuchi from 25 October 1943 until 13 April 1944, the day the ship was lost. He came to her from command of the destroyer Mochizuki and remained a lieutenant commander through the months he had Ikazuchi.
Ikazuchi was an Akatsuki-class destroyer completed at Uraga in August 1932. By the time Ikunaga took her she had already served on the China coast and through the early Pacific War, from Hong Kong and the Netherlands East Indies to the Aleutians and the Solomon Islands. Earlier captains of the same ship included Torashiro Takeuchi in the late 1930s, Shunsaku Kudo from November 1940 into August 1942, Hagemi Ishii for a brief spell in August 1942, and Saneho Maeda, who turned the ship over to Ikunaga. Under Kudo, on 2 March 1942, Ikazuchi stopped in the Java Sea and took aboard hundreds of Allied sailors from ships sunk in that fighting. Maeda's tenure covered the Guadalcanal campaign, including the night action of 13 November 1942, when hits set her forward gun mount afire, and her presence at the Battle of the Komandorski Islands in March 1943. After that she settled into escort work between Truk and Japan, which was the duty Ikunaga inherited.
Through the winter of 1943 and 1944 he kept Ikazuchi on those central Pacific routes. In November she escorted convoys between Truk and Yokosuka. From late November into early December she carried troops from Truk out to Kwajalein, Mili, Kusaie, and Ponape, then returned. On a convoy back toward Yokosuka at the end of December she picked up survivors of the transport Nagoya Maru on 1 January 1944, after that ship was torpedoed, and then went into dock. While she lay at Yokosuka that January, a twin 25-millimeter gun replaced the 13-millimeter machine guns on the platform just forward of the bridge.
In late March 1944 Ikazuchi escorted the troop convoy Matsu No. 3 from Tokyo to Saipan. On 12 April she left Saipan screening the transport Sanyo Maru, bound for Woleai. The next day the United States submarine Harder torpedoed Ikazuchi about two hundred nautical miles south of Guam, near 10°13′N, 143°51′E, in the waters between Guam and the Carolines. Depth charges exploded as the destroyer went down. No one was saved. The dead numbered 238, Ikunaga among them. On 10 June 1944 the navy struck Ikazuchi from the list.
His command had lasted less than six months. In that time the ship did the work left to Japan's remaining destroyers: convoy escort, troop lifts among the island bases, and the recovery of men from ships already sunk. The torpedo attack of 13 April ended the destroyer and her captain together.