Ships
- IJN Amatsukaze Captain from 10 January 1943
On 10 January 1943 Commander Masao Tanaka became captain of the Imperial Japanese Navy destroyer Amatsukaze. He relieved Tameichi Hara, who had commanded her since she was completed in 1940 and through the fighting of the first year of the Pacific War. Tanaka’s sea command before that had been the destroyer Fumizuki. He joined Amatsukaze in home waters while she was repairing damage suffered in the night action off Guadalcanal in November 1942.
Amatsukaze was a Kagero-class destroyer built at Maizuru and commissioned in October 1940. Her name means heavenly wind. The winter refit strengthened her 25 mm antiaircraft battery before she went south again. Early in February 1943 Tanaka took the repaired ship out to Truk. In the middle of the month, with Urakaze, she carried naval air personnel to Wewak, then helped tow the submarine-damaged destroyer Harusame back into Truk, arriving on 23 February.
Through the spring she stayed on the route linking Truk, Palau, and the New Guinea coast. She screened a tanker convoy down to Palau, and in April she escorted transports toward Hansa Bay, between Wewak and Madang. For the rest of 1943 the pattern held: convoy escort out of Truk, as Japanese destroyers were used to keep men and fuel moving through the Carolines.
Tanaka was promoted to captain in November 1943. From 12 to 24 November Amatsukaze escorted convoys from Truk to Palau and back. Between 7 and 14 December she screened the light carrier Chitose and the supply ship Irako from Truk to Yokosuka, and she was overhauled there before the new year.
On 10 January 1944 the Navy ordered Lieutenant Commander Akiji Suga to relieve him. Suga was killed aboard the destroyer Sazanami on 14 January, before he could join, and Tanaka was still in command when Amatsukaze sailed. From 11 January she left Moji with Yukikaze and Chitose to escort the fast tanker convoy HI-31 toward Singapore. Captain Bunji Furukawa, commander of Destroyer Division 16, was embarked in her.
On the evening of 16 January, north of the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea, Amatsukaze sighted the American submarine Redfin on the surface, chased her, and opened fire. As the destroyer turned back toward the convoy a torpedo struck. The blast at the forward torpedo mount tore the bow away. About eighty men were killed, Furukawa among them. Tanaka survived and took charge of the after section, which stayed afloat. The convoy went on. The drifting stern was later recovered and fitted with a temporary bow so the ship could serve again.
Tanaka’s next duty was with the 2nd Surface Escort Group, and he later instructed at the Torpedo School. Amatsukaze, rebuilt around the after section he had kept in hand, returned to escort work under Takanobu Sasaki and then under Yoshizo Hasebe. Tomoyuki Morita commanded her at the end. On 6 April 1945, off Amoy, United States Army B-25s bombed her. Her crew beached the wreck, and she was scuttled on 10 April.