Ships
- IJN Nowaki Captain from 9 April 1941 · Relieved on 10 April 1943
Commander Mogotaro Koga of the Imperial Japanese Navy was the first captain of the destroyer Nowaki. He had already commanded the destroyers Ariake, Murakumo, and Shinonome when, on 15 November 1940, the Navy appointed him chief of her fitting-out crew. On 9 April 1941 he became her commanding officer. Nowaki, a Kagerō-class ship whose name means an autumn gale, had been laid down at Maizuru Naval Arsenal on 8 November 1939 and launched on 17 September 1940. She commissioned on 28 April 1941 with Koga still in command.
She entered Destroyer Division 4 beside Arashi, Hagikaze, and Maikaze, in Destroyer Squadron 4 of the Second Fleet. Koga spent the rest of 1941 working the new destroyer up in home waters. By late November the division was placed for the southern advance that opened the Pacific War.
In December 1941 Nowaki escorted invasion forces bound for Malaya and the Philippines. In the first days of March 1942 she and Arashi swept the sea south of Java with heavy cruisers of the covering force. On 2 March gunfire from the two destroyers sank the British destroyer Stronghold. Ships of that same force sank the American gunboat Asheville, and on 4 March they overwhelmed a small Allied group that included the Australian sloop Yarra, the depot ship Anking, and the tanker Francol. Those losses were the work of the ships acting together.
Koga took Nowaki into the Battle of Midway in June 1942 with Vice Admiral Chūichi Nagumo’s carrier striking force. On 4 June, after dive bombers left the carrier Akagi burning and unable to steam, Nagumo shifted his flag to Nowaki for a time before his staff moved on to the light cruiser Nagara. Before dawn on 5 June, Japanese destroyers, Nowaki among them, put torpedoes into the abandoned carrier and sank her. The scuttling was shared by the destroyers that fired.
He remained captain through the rest of 1942 and into the spring of 1943. On 10 April 1943 the Navy relieved him and ordered him to command the 1st Minesweeping Unit. Later postings gave him Destroyer Division 7 and the naval barracks at Hamana. Command of Nowaki passed during 1943 to Masami Araki and then to Takeo Kanda. Setsuji Moriya had her from December 1943. Under Moriya she fought in the Philippine campaign, took survivors off the heavy cruiser Chikuma after the Battle off Samar, and on 26 October 1944 was caught south-southeast of Legaspi by American cruisers and destroyers. Their gunfire left her dead in the water, and a torpedo from Owen finished her. She went down with Moriya, her crew, and the men she had rescued. Koga’s two years on her bridge had ended in April 1943.