Ships
- IJN Hagikaze Captain from 16 June 1943
Lieutenant Commander Masahiro Magoshi assumed command of the Imperial Japanese Navy destroyer Hagikaze on 16 June 1943. She was a Kagerō-class fleet destroyer, completed in March 1941, and she had already spent nearly two years at war. Ships of her class carried six 12.7-centimeter guns and eight tubes for the Type 93 torpedo, with speed enough to work with the main fleet or to dash in and out of contested islands overnight. At the time Magoshi came aboard, Hagikaze was serving in Destroyer Division 4.
That summer the division’s business was the night supply of Japanese troops in the central Solomons. Guadalcanal was in American hands, and the fighting had moved into New Georgia and the waters around Kolombangara. Destroyers loaded soldiers, ammunition, and food after dark, ran down from the Rabaul area, and put the cargo ashore before daylight aircraft could reach them. Hagikaze made those passages with Magoshi in command. The distances were short. Reefs, patrol boats, and aircraft made each run tight, especially with troops crowded on deck.
On the night of 1–2 August 1943 Hagikaze was at sea with Arashi, Shigure, and Amagiri on a reinforcement trip to Vila, on Kolombangara. During the return through Blackett Strait, Amagiri rammed the U.S. patrol torpedo boat PT-109 and cut the boat in two. Magoshi’s destroyer was in that column, on the same circuit the ships were running every few nights. The strait was narrow enough that a fleet destroyer and a wooden torpedo boat could meet in the dark on a routine passage home.
On the night of 6 August he took Hagikaze out again, bound for Kolombangara with troops and supplies. Arashi, Kawakaze, and Shigure sailed with her. The commander of Destroyer Division 4 was embarked in Hagikaze, and Magoshi was the ship’s commanding officer. In Vella Gulf, U.S. destroyers under Commander Frederick Moosbrugger tracked the column by radar and launched torpedoes at long range. Hagikaze, Arashi, and Kawakaze were hit and sank quickly. Shigure, last in line, got clear after a torpedo struck her and failed to explode. The action is the Battle of Vella Gulf.
Most of the sailors and embarked soldiers on Hagikaze died in the sinking. Magoshi was killed with the ship that night. He had held command for seven weeks. In that time Hagikaze had been a transport for the central Solomons, and she was lost on the same route, in a night action opened by radar-directed torpedoes and finished with gunfire. Three of the four Japanese destroyers were gone when the firing stopped.