Ships
- IJN Mikazuki Captain from 5 August 1942 · In command when she was lost, 27 July 1943
Lieutenant Commander Nitaro Yamazaki served in the Imperial Japanese Navy. On 5 August 1942 he became captain of the destroyer Mikazuki, and he was still in command when she was lost on 27 July 1943. She was a Mutsuki-class ship, completed at the Sasebo Naval Arsenal in 1927 and named for the crescent moon.
Mikazuki came to him after a quiet opening to the Pacific War. With Carrier Division 3 of the First Fleet she had stayed in home waters as escort to the carriers Hōshō and Zuihō. At Midway, on 4 and 5 June 1942, she screened Zuihō in Admiral Nobutake Kondō’s occupation force and took no part in the carrier fighting. The ship then moved to the Southwest Area Fleet. Tsuneo Sakamoto had captained her earlier, from 15 November 1940 to 20 August 1941.
Under Yamazaki, Mikazuki spent the rest of 1942 and the first months of 1943 escorting convoys between Moji, on Kyushu, and Taiwan. In late March she entered Sasebo again and remained in the yard until 10 June 1943. The overhaul fitted an aging destroyer for the work then required in the South Pacific, with part of her gun and torpedo armament removed and 25 mm anti-aircraft guns added. On 31 March 1943 she was assigned to Destroyer Division 30 of Destroyer Squadron 3, Eighth Fleet, the Rabaul command, in company with Mochizuki and Uzuki.
After the refit she joined that force at Rabaul. Through late June and July 1943 Yamazaki used her as a fast transport, carrying troops and supplies to Kolombangara. On 5 and 6 July, during the Battle of Kula Gulf, her share of the operation was landing a naval landing force. On 9 July she put another body of troops ashore on the island. On the night of 12 July, in the Battle of Kolombangara, she covered the transport group.
On 27 July 1943 Mikazuki left Rabaul with the destroyer Ariake to land troops at Tuluvu, near Cape Gloucester on New Britain. She struck a reef offshore and stuck fast. B-25 Mitchell bombers of the United States Fifth Air Force destroyed the grounded ship, and eight of her crew were killed. Yamazaki was her captain at the loss. On 15 October 1943 the navy removed Mikazuki from the register.