Ships
- IJN Samidare Captain from 13 October 1942
Noboru Nakamura was an officer of the Imperial Japanese Navy who commanded the destroyer Samidare from 13 October 1942, relieving Takisaburo Matsubara. He took the ship as a lieutenant commander. On 1 November 1942, with Samidare still in the Solomon Islands, he was promoted to commander.
Samidare, a Shiratsuyu-class destroyer completed at Uraga in January 1937, carried a name that refers to the rains of early summer. She served in Destroyer Division 2 with Murasame, Harusame, and Yudachi, in Destroyer Squadron 4 of the Second Fleet. Those ships had already been through the Philippines landings, the Java Sea, Midway, and the carrier battles east of the Solomons. Nakamura’s first days in command fell in the middle of a supply run. The destroyer had left Shortland on 12 October with a convoy bound for Guadalcanal. American aircraft found her on 14 and 15 October, and near misses caused only light damage. She was back at Shortland by 16 October.
After that damage was made good, Samidare joined Rear Admiral Hiroaki Abe’s bombardment force for the night action off Guadalcanal on 12–13 November 1942. She entered the melee late. Together with the ships around her, her guns and torpedoes took part in the fighting that sank the American destroyer Monssen and damaged the light cruiser Helena. She then came alongside the crippled Yudachi and took off more than two hundred men, Yudachi’s captain leaving last. Samidare shelled the wreck and fired torpedoes in an effort to scuttle her, then drew off with the sinking still unconfirmed. Shells from the American cruiser Portland finished Yudachi later that morning.
On the night of 14–15 November, Nakamura had Samidare with Vice Admiral Nobutake Kondō’s force when the Japanese escorts launched a heavy torpedo attack. That salvo, shared among the screening destroyers, accounted for the American destroyers Preston and Walke, left Benham so badly damaged that she had to be scuttled, and damaged Gwin. Samidare came through the night able to steam and fight. When the battleship Kirishima was disabled by Washington and abandoned, Samidare took survivors aboard, among them Kirishima’s commanding officer. The destroyer withdrew to Truk and, before November ended, went on to Yokosuka for repairs.
Nakamura remained captain after the yard period and brought Samidare back to the South Pacific. Through the first half of 1943 and into the summer he kept her in the destroyer work of the Solomon Islands, the escort and transport runs that supplied Japanese garrisons and, as the campaign turned, helped move men out. His tour closed on 13 August 1943.
The ship had another year of war under later captains, among them Tokuta Nishimura and, at the end, Yasunosuke Okuma. In August 1944, with Okuma in command, Samidare grounded on a reef near Palau during a transport run. While she lay stranded, the American submarine Batfish torpedoed her. She broke in two, the stern sank, and the bow was left on the reef. The crew abandoned her. Nakamura’s command had ended a year before that loss.