Ships
- IJN Kinugasa Captain from 20 August 1941
placeholder — research first, then write the biography in the next turn. Masao Sawa took command of the heavy cruiser Kinugasa on 20 August 1941, shortly before Japan entered the Pacific War. The ship belonged to the Aoba class and was then assigned to Cruiser Division 6 with Aoba, Furutaka, and Kako.
Sawa was a graduate of the Imperial Japanese Naval Academy, class of 1914. Before the war he had served in staff and command posts that prepared him for a cruiser captaincy, and he was already a captain when he came aboard Kinugasa.
Under his command Kinugasa sortied with the striking force that opened the war against the Philippines and the Dutch East Indies. In the Battle of the Java Sea in late February 1942, Cruiser Division 6 fought in the night action that destroyed the Allied squadron. Sawa’s ship then took part in the follow-up sweep that sank the damaged cruiser Exeter and the destroyers Encounter and Pope on 1 March 1942. Those sinkings were the work of the Japanese force as a whole, and the record does not credit Kinugasa alone with any one of them.
Sawa left Kinugasa on 1 September 1942, after about a year in command. Rear Admiral Aritomo Gotō had led the division through the early Solomons fighting, and Sawa’s relief came just as the Guadalcanal campaign was turning into a series of night surface battles. Kinugasa was later sunk off Guadalcanal on 14 November 1942, after Sawa had already gone ashore.
Later in the war Sawa served in shore appointments rather than in another major seagoing command. He survived the war. The year of his death is recorded as 1970.