Ships
- IJN RO-101 (RO-101) Captain, 4 September 1943 – 15 September 1943 · Lost with her
Lieutenant Masakata Fujisawa commanded the Imperial Japanese Navy coastal submarine RO-101 from 4 September 1943 until 15 September 1943. He took her over in Simpson Harbor at Rabaul and was lost with her on patrol southeast of San Cristobal.
RO-101 belonged to the small Ro-100 type, boats built for coastal work so the larger fleet submarines could be kept for longer cruises. Kawasaki laid her down at Kobe in September 1941, launched her in April 1942, and completed her that autumn. A little over two hundred feet long, she carried four bow torpedo tubes and light anti-aircraft guns. From commissioning she served under Zenji Orita in the New Guinea and Solomon Islands fighting, and she came back into Simpson Harbor in late August 1943 after seven war patrols. Orders were already waiting for Orita. He was to leave RO-101 and take command of I-177.
The officer sent to relieve Orita, Lieutenant Arima, never reached Rabaul. On 28 August a PB4Y-1 Liberator shot down the Kawanishi flying boat carrying him from Truk, off Bougainville, and Arima was killed. Fujisawa was selected in his place. For several days before the change, Orita turned the boat over to him and the two officers took her out for practice dives, so the new commanding officer could learn the small habits of a submarine whose crew already knew her. On 4 September 1943 Fujisawa assumed command. Orita went aboard I-177, moored about three hundred yards away in the harbor.
On 10 September Fujisawa took RO-101 out of Simpson Harbor on her eighth war patrol. The patrol area given him lay southeast of San Cristobal, across the routes used by Allied shipping in the southern Solomons.
On 15 September, at the southern entrance to Indispensable Strait, RO-101 attacked a convoy of two cargo ships bound for Espiritu Santo. The escorts, the destroyer Saufley and the light minelayer Montgomery, sighted a torpedo wake late in the morning. The torpedoes missed. Saufley ran down the wake, gained sonar contact around midday, and made a series of depth-charge attacks through the early afternoon. The submarine then surfaced, and Saufley fired on the conning tower with her five-inch guns and machine guns. A Catalina joined the attack and dropped two depth charges. The first fell clear and the second hit. RO-101 went under, a heavy explosion followed, and by late afternoon diesel oil covered about a square mile of sea near 10°57′ south, 163°56′ east. Saufley and the Catalina sank her there. Fujisawa was lost with the boat.
No further word of RO-101 reached a Japanese base. On 11 October 1943 the Navy presumed her lost in the Solomons with her crew, and on 1 December 1943 it removed her from the Navy list. Fujisawa’s command had run from the handover in Simpson Harbor to that afternoon off San Cristobal.