Ships
- IJN Hatsukari Captain from 20 August 1941 · Relieved on 5 October 1942
Kusuo Nakao was a lieutenant in the Imperial Japanese Navy. From 20 August 1941 to 5 October 1942 he was captain of the torpedo boat Hatsukari. A command of that size was a lieutenant's billet, and the tour ran from the last months of peace with the United States and Britain through the first year of the Pacific War.
Hatsukari was a Chidori-class torpedo boat, one of four sisters completed in the mid-1930s for coastal work under the naval treaties. The original design set guns and torpedo tubes on a short, narrow hull. In March 1934 the sister ship Tomozuru capsized in a storm during maneuvers, and the navy rebuilt the class with ballast low in the hull and less weight aloft. Hatsukari met the Pacific War in that revised form: steadier in a seaway, and armed more lightly than the first plans had allowed.
Nakao took command on 20 August 1941, while Japan was already at war in China and Hatsukari was employed on escort, patrol, and local defense. Boats of her class watched harbor approaches and shepherded smaller shipping along the coast. On 8 December 1941, Tokyo time, the war widened across the Pacific. He remained in the ship as mines, submarines, and aircraft turned ordinary coastal passages into a standing hazard for every small escort.
He was relieved on 5 October 1942. From late summer 1941 through the first autumn of the Pacific War, Hatsukari was his ship, and her work under his command was the daily round of escort and patrol that fell to a lieutenant and a small crew.