Ships
- IJN Shiranui Captain from 5 October 1943
Commander Masatoshi Yasumane of the Imperial Japanese Navy became captain of the destroyer Shiranui on 5 October 1943. The appointment ran only to 1 November. Through those weeks the ship lay at Maizuru, where a long reconstruction was nearly finished, and the orders named him captain while he kept another assignment, the arrangement used for Shiranui during most of her time in dock.
Shiranui was a fleet destroyer of the Kagerō class, built at the Uraga dockyard. Her keel was laid on 30 August 1937, she was launched on 28 June 1938, and she joined the Kure Naval District on 20 December 1939. She entered Destroyer Division 18 with Kagerō, Kasumi, and Arare. In the opening months of the Pacific War that division screened the carrier striking force, covering the Pearl Harbor operation, the advance through the Dutch East Indies, and the raid into the Indian Ocean. On 1 March 1942 she took part in the attack that sank the Dutch freighter Modjokerto.
Her own hull was wrecked on 5 July 1942 off Kiska. The American submarine Growler torpedoed her and tore the bow away, killing three men. In the same attack Arare went down and Kasumi was damaged. The ruined forepart of Shiranui was cut away so the rest of the ship could be saved, and early in September she reached Maizuru. Repairs there lasted about fourteen months. In June 1943, after Kagerō was lost, Navy paperwork began to style the class the Shiranui type, while the namesake herself was still in the arsenal.
Command changed hands several times while the ship was unfit for sea. Shizuo Akazawa had been captain from October 1940 until September 1942, through the early carrier operations and the blow off Kiska. Koshichi Sugioka succeeded him, then Hiroo Yamana, then Toyoji Hitomi, and then Hinoe Tomoshige, each for a short turn. Yasumane relieved Tomoshige on 5 October 1943. On 15 October the Navy moved Shiranui from fourth reserve to first reserve and placed her under the Maizuru Naval District force, marking the rebuild as nearly complete.
Teisaburo Ara relieved Yasumane on 1 November 1943 and stayed in command until the ship was lost. Later that month Shiranui passed to the Ninth Fleet in the Southeast Area. In 1944 she went to escort and patrol work in northern waters with the Fifth Fleet, then south again for the Philippines. In the Battle of Leyte Gulf she entered Surigao Strait with the cruiser force under Vice Admiral Kiyohide Shima, launched torpedoes toward the American line, and joined the gunfire that drove off motor torpedo boats. The torpedoes missed. On the morning of 27 October 1944, as she withdrew, aircraft from the carrier Enterprise struck her off Semirara Island. She exploded and sank with her entire crew. Ara was killed and was promoted to captain on the day of his death. Yasumane's recorded service in her had closed at Maizuru the previous autumn, as the destroyer was being made ready for that final year.