Ships
- IJN Michishio Captain from 15 November 1940
- IJN Takanami Captain from 31 August 1942
Masami Ogura was born on 1 December 1901 in Akasaka, then a town in Fuwa District, Gifu Prefecture, the eldest son of Kichigoro Ogura and his wife Yone. He graduated from the Imperial Japanese Naval Academy at Etajima on 14 July 1923 with the 51st class and was promoted to lieutenant in December 1928. In April 1933 he served with a temporary naval guard unit at Harbin in Manchukuo. In September 1934, while commanding a Japanese river gunboat on the Sungari, he took part in the clash later known in Japan by the phrase “Japanese are here,” in which nine hostages were recovered and the band holding them was destroyed. Promoted to lieutenant commander in November 1935, he taught torpedo at the Naval Academy until 1937.
In December 1937 he became captain of the destroyer Kisaragi. In October 1938 that ship worked with the Army on operations up the Yangtze. On 15 November 1940 he relieved Ichitaro Oshima in command of the Asashio-class destroyer Michishio. She belonged to Destroyer Division 8 with Oshio, Asashio, and Arashio, in Destroyer Squadron 2 of the Second Fleet. Ogura was promoted to commander in October 1941.
At the start of the Pacific War, Michishio moved with the division from the Terashima Strait to Mako in the Pescadores. Through December 1941 she screened Admiral Nobutake Kondo’s Southern Force, distant cover for the landings in Malaya and the Philippines. In the first weeks of 1942 she went on into the Netherlands East Indies, escorting invasion shipping as the division pushed south.
On the night of 19–20 February 1942, in the Battle of Badung Strait off Bali, Michishio turned back into Lombok Strait after Oshio and Asashio came under attack. Shortly before dawn she engaged two American destroyers, fired torpedoes, and claimed a hit. Shells struck her No. 2 gun, the radio room, and a torpedo mount, and further hits wrecked the engine rooms. She lay dead in the water. Fifty-three officers and men were killed, among them the chief engineer and most of the boiler and engine-room watch on duty, and Ogura was one of fifty-three wounded. Army bombers added near misses later that day. She reached Makassar on 22 February, the wounded went ashore to hospital, and after emergency repairs she made her own way back to Japan. While she was in dock she was carried as a special-duty ship. In August 1942 Kiyoshi Tomura relieved Ogura.
His next command was the new Yugumo-class destroyer Takanami, completed at Uraga on 31 August 1942, when he became her captain. She was assigned to the Maizuru Naval District. Late in September she left Saeki with a convoy bound for Rabaul. On 1 October she joined Destroyer Division 31 with Naganami and Makinami, still in Destroyer Squadron 2, and carried Captain Toshio Shimizu, the division commander. Early in October, off Rabaul, she picked up survivors of the torpedoed transport Naminoue Maru. In November she worked the Solomon Islands route, escorting during the naval fighting off Guadalcanal, and returned to the Shortland Islands.
On 30 November 1942 Takanami left Shortland on a drum-supply run to Guadalcanal and took the lead ahead of Rear Admiral Raizo Tanaka’s reinforcement group. That night, off Tassafaronga in Ironbottom Sound, her lookouts sighted the cruisers and destroyers of an American task force. Ogura closed and fought with guns and torpedoes together, and Takanami launched eight torpedoes. American gunfire then fell on the leading Japanese ship. Hits set her torpedo mounts and boiler rooms afire and left her unable to steam. Ogura, directing the fight from the bridge, was badly wounded by blast and fragments when the forward turret was hit. He was carried below and died. Takanami sank south of Savo Island. In the same few minutes, torpedoes from the Japanese column wrecked the bows of Minneapolis and New Orleans, damaged Pensacola, and sank Northampton. The fight was too short and too crowded for each of those hits to be fixed on one destroyer.
One hundred ninety-seven of those aboard Takanami were killed, Shimizu among them. Men who reached the north coast of Guadalcanal included survivors later taken prisoner. The ship was removed from the Navy list on 24 December 1942. Ogura was advanced to the rank of captain on the date of his death.