Ships
- IJN Hayate In command when she was lost, 11 December 1941
Lieutenant Commander Minoru Takatsuka of the Imperial Japanese Navy took command of the destroyer Hayate on 25 July 1941. The ship was then in home waters. That month the Fourth Fleet, which had been training among the Marianas and the Carolines, sent most of its ships back to Japan for docking and repairs before the expected war, and Hayate went with them. Takatsuka remained her commanding officer from that appointment until the morning she was lost.
Hayate was one of the Kamikaze-class destroyers built for the fleet after the First World War. Laid down at the Ishikawajima yard in Tokyo in November 1922 as Destroyer No. 13, she was launched in March 1925 and completed that December. On 1 August 1928 she received the name Hayate. She was carried on the rolls of the Sasebo Naval District. By 1941 she served in Destroyer Division 29 with Oite, Asanagi, and Yunagi, inside Destroyer Squadron 6 of the Fourth Fleet, the command charged with the Japanese island territories of the central Pacific. From the middle of October the squadron assembled at Truk.
In the opening plan of the war, Hayate was assigned to the expedition against Wake Island. Rear Admiral Sadamichi Kajioka directed the force from the light cruiser Yubari, with the light cruisers Tenryu and Tatsuta, several older destroyers, two converted patrol boats, and transports carrying a naval landing party. Hayate left Truk on 29 November 1941, reached Roi in Kwajalein Atoll on 3 December, and put to sea again on 8 December as the ships formed for the approach. On the night of 10 December the warships closed the atoll to cover the landing.
Early on 11 December the Japanese ships opened fire on Wake. United States Marine coast-defense guns replied. Hayate turned so that her whole battery could bear, and in that turn she lay broadside to the guns. A shell struck her and a violent explosion broke the ship in two. She sank in about two minutes, some two miles off the island. Takatsuka went down with her. One man from the crew was taken from the water, and the landing was called off. Kajioka's ships withdrew. Hayate was the first Japanese destroyer sunk in the Pacific War.
The navy entered Takatsuka as killed in action on 11 December 1941 and advanced him to commander. On 15 January 1942 Hayate was dropped from Destroyer Division 29 and removed from the naval register. His command had run from late July to the morning the ship was lost off Wake.