Ships
- IJN Inazuma Captain from 20 February 1939
- IJN Tanikaze Captain from 15 September 1941
Commander Motoi Katsumi was an Imperial Japanese Navy destroyer officer of the naval academy's 49th class. He commanded the special-type destroyer Inazuma in the years before the Pacific War and then the new Kagero-class destroyer Tanikaze. He was killed in an air attack on 15 January 1943, while Tanikaze was still under his command in the Solomon Islands.
Katsumi took command of Inazuma on 20 February 1939. She was one of the large fleet destroyers completed in the early 1930s, with 12.7-centimeter guns and a heavy torpedo battery. His tour covered the last years of peace in the Pacific and the continuing war in China. He left her for a newer destroyer as Japan moved toward war with the United States and Britain.
He took command of Tanikaze on 15 September 1941. The name means valley wind. Fujinagata in Osaka had completed her the previous April, and she joined Destroyer Division 17 with Urakaze, Isokaze, and Hamakaze, in Destroyer Squadron 1 of the First Fleet. In the third week of November the division steamed from Saeki to Hitokappu Bay in the Kuriles. From there Tanikaze screened Vice Admiral Chuichi Nagumo's carriers for the attack on Pearl Harbor. Later that month she escorted Hiryu and Soryu during the air strikes that opened the capture of Wake, and she was back at Kure before the end of December.
Division 17 stayed with the carrier force through the southern advance in early 1942. In April Tanikaze screened the Indian Ocean raid, including the strikes on Colombo and Trincomalee. On 10 April the division shifted to Destroyer Squadron 10 of the First Air Fleet. The ships reached Kure late that month and went into dock before the next fleet operation.
At the Battle of Midway, on 4 and 5 June 1942, Tanikaze again escorted Nagumo's striking force. After Hiryu was left crippled, Katsumi was sent back to stand by the carrier, take off survivors, and sink her if she could not be saved. Hiryu stayed afloat for hours. While Tanikaze steamed west to rejoin the fleet, dive bombers from the American carriers Enterprise and Hornet found her alone and attacked in force. Katsumi worked the ship through sharp turns, and the bombs missed. Fragments from a near miss burst in the after gun turret and killed its crew. The destroyer came through and returned to Japan.
In the second half of 1942 Tanikaze went into the fight for the Solomons. She screened carriers at the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands in late October and, working from Rabaul and the Shortlands, carried troops and supplies through the waters off Guadalcanal and the nearby islands, including a late-December run toward New Georgia. On a transport run toward Guadalcanal in mid-January 1943, American aircraft attacked on 15 January. Near misses did only minor harm to the ship. Fragments from those bursts killed Katsumi. Tanikaze went on to Rabaul for repair. On 25 January Kiyoshi Tomura, who had commanded the destroyer Michishio, was appointed her next commanding officer.