Ships
- IJN Kagero Captain from 15 October 1940
Commander Minoru Yokoi of the Imperial Japanese Navy commanded the fleet destroyer Kagero. He took her on 15 October 1940, already a commander, and he came to her from the destroyer Asashio. The appointment gave him the name ship of a class that had only just entered service, still in the peacetime fleet.
Kagero had been launched at the Maizuru Navy Yard on 27 September 1938 and completed in November 1939. Her name is the word for the shimmer of heated air. She displaced about 2,000 tons, stretched 118.5 meters, and was designed for 35 knots. At a cruising speed of 18 knots she could steam about 5,000 nautical miles. Three twin 12.7-centimeter mounts supplied her guns. Two quadruple tubes, with reloads nearby, gave her the 61-centimeter Type 93 torpedo on which Japanese fleet destroyers of her generation were built. Ships of the type were meant to stay with the fast carriers and to attack at long range.
By the autumn of 1941 Kagero was in Destroyer Division 18 with Shiranui, Kasumi, and Arare. The division belonged to Destroyer Squadron 2 of the Second Fleet. From 18 to 22 November 1941 the division left Saeki in company with Destroyer Squadron 1 and steamed north to Etorofu, in the Kurile Islands. There the Hawaii striking force was gathering in Hitokappu Bay.
The force sailed on 26 November. Kagero screened Vice Admiral Chuichi Nagumo's carriers Akagi, Kaga, Soryu, Hiryu, Shokaku, and Zuikaku through the approach and the air attack on Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941. The light cruiser Abukuma and Destroyer Division 17 worked in the same guard. The passage out, and the morning off Oahu, passed for the destroyer without a surface engagement. On the way home, on 17 December, the screen depth-charged a contact that proved false. Kagero entered Kure on 24 December.
That return closed his command. After the ship reached home waters he suffered a cerebral hemorrhage and was relieved in the closing days of December 1941. Terumichi Arimoto, who had been captain of the destroyer Akigumo, succeeded him. Yokoi remained in hospital and died there on 7 April 1943.
He had held Kagero from 15 October 1940 through the last year of peace and through the carrier force's voyage to Hawaii and back. The ship's later wartime cruises fell to her next captain. In May 1943, a month after Yokoi's death, Kagero was lost to mines in Blackett Strait, off Kolombangara.