Ships
- IJN Yugiri Captain, 3 September 1942 – 25 October 1943
- IJN Asashimo Captain from 27 November 1943
Nisaburo Maekawa came out of the 53rd class at Etajima. On 25 July 1942, as a lieutenant commander, he took command of the Fubuki-class destroyer Asagiri in Destroyer Division 20. On 28 August, east of Santa Isabel, American dive bombers caught the division on a troop run toward Guadalcanal. Bombs set off the torpedoes aboard Asagiri, and she sank. Maekawa was among those who got off her.
The same strike hit her sister ship Yugiri. A bomb burst at the bridge and killed Captain Yuji Yamada, who commanded Destroyer Division 20 and was embarked in her, together with thirty-one other men. About forty more were wounded. Yugiri reached the Shortlands under her own power and then went on to Truk. On 3 September 1942, six days after that bomb, Maekawa took her. He was a lieutenant commander. Masayoshi Motokura had been her commanding officer since April 1941.
He brought her to Kure for the long repair. She entered the arsenal on 6 October 1942 and went into drydock. Destroyer Division 20 was deactivated during the passage, and at Kure the ship was carried in reserve while the yard rebuilt her. The work lasted until 15 January 1943. Late that month she sailed for Rabaul under the Eighth Fleet, and Maekawa used her on patrol and escort duty in the Solomons.
He still had her on 16 May 1943. Northwest of Kavieng, one torpedo from Grayback smashed her bow. Nine men were killed. Amagiri towed her in. Maekawa remained in command through the repair that followed and left Yugiri on 25 October 1943. Shuichi Otsuji had her in the night action off Cape St. George. In the early hours of 25 November 1943, gunfire from Charles Ausburne, Claxton, and Dyson sank her about fifty miles east of the cape, and Otsuji was killed. The submarine I-177 afterward took off 278 survivors, and I-181 took off 11 more.
His next ship was Asashimo. On 1 November 1943 he was appointed fitting-out officer of that new Yugumo-class destroyer at the Fujinagata yard in Osaka, and the fitting-out office opened at the yard the next day. Asashimo was completed on 27 November 1943. Maekawa became her first captain that day, still a lieutenant commander, and she joined the 11th Destroyer Squadron for working-up in the Inland Sea. On 27 January 1944 he turned her over to Yoshiro Sugihara.