Ships
- IJN Urakaze Captain from 15 December 1940
Commander Nagayoshi Shiraishi of the Imperial Japanese Navy was the first captain of the destroyer Urakaze. On 16 September 1940, while the ship was still completing at the Fujinagata yard in Osaka, he was named chief of her fitting-out crew. On 15 December 1940, the day she was commissioned, he became her commanding officer. He came to her from command of the destroyer Ayanami.
Urakaze was a Kagero-class fleet destroyer, laid down on 11 April 1939 and launched on 10 April 1940. She entered service for the Kure Naval District and joined Destroyer Division 17 with Tanikaze, Isokaze, and Hamakaze, in the Second Torpedo Squadron of the Second Fleet. The division spent 1941 working up in home waters. Urakaze wore the division commander’s flag for a day at the end of January, the pennant then returning to Isokaze, and again from 25 to 28 May, after which it returned to Tanikaze. In the wartime organization of 1 September 1941 she remained in that squadron. On 5 November she was assigned to the Mobile Force, and on 23 November to its screening unit.
On 18 November 1941 Urakaze sailed from Saeki with the squadron and reached Etorofu, in the Kuriles, on the 22nd. From that anchorage she screened Vice Admiral Chuichi Nagumo’s carriers on the way to Hawaii and during the attack on Pearl Harbor on 7 December. She then stayed with Hiryu and Soryu for the carrier strikes on Wake Island on 21–23 December, and she returned to Kure on 29 December.
She continued with the carrier force into the spring of 1942. The carriers struck Colombo on 5 April and Trincomalee on 9 April, with Destroyer Division 17 in the screen. On 10 April the division passed to Destroyer Squadron 10 of the First Air Fleet. Urakaze reached Kure on 27 April and went into dock. At the Battle of Midway, on 4 and 5 June, she again screened Nagumo’s striking force. From 15 to 23 June she escorted the carrier Zuikaku from Kure to Ominato, and from 24 June to 7 July she screened ships on patrol southwest of the Aleutians. On 14 July Destroyer Squadron 10 moved to the Third Fleet.
By late August Urakaze was in the South Pacific. On 28 and 29 August she covered a troop movement from Rabaul toward Milne Bay, and on 31 August she arrived in the Shortland Islands. On 1 September she took part in a troop run to Guadalcanal. From 4 to 6 September she escorted a convoy from the Shortlands back to Rabaul. On 8 September 1942 Shiraishi was relieved by Commander Juichi Iwagami. He afterward commanded Destroyer Division 2.
Urakaze remained a busy ship under later captains. Shoichi Yoshida commanded her from August 1943 until May 1944, and Yasuteru Yokota had her from May 1944. On the night of 21 November 1944, north of Keelung, Formosa, she was screening battleships when a torpedo from the American submarine Sealion struck her during an attack aimed at that battle line. She blew up and sank with all hands, Yokota among them. Shiraishi’s tour in Urakaze had ended on 8 September 1942, more than two years before that loss.