Ships
- IJN Wakaba Captain from 7 November 1942 · Relieved on 1 October 1943
Nobuyoshi Suetsugu was a lieutenant commander in the Imperial Japanese Navy and the eldest son of Admiral Nobumasa Suetsugu, who had commanded the Combined Fleet and later served as home minister. He entered the Naval Academy with the 58th class and placed twentieth among 113 cadets. His service ran through the Pacific War at sea and on a fleet staff.
On 7 November 1942 he became captain of the destroyer Wakaba, relieving Masakichi Kuroki. Wakaba was a Hatsuharu-class ship of Destroyer Division 21. The handover took place at Shimushu, in the Kurile Islands, while the division was supporting the Japanese garrisons in the Aleutians. The same day she sailed with Hatsushimo to carry more men to Kiska.
He held that command through the months that followed. Wakaba stayed on the northern run, escorting ships and moving men and supplies between the Kuriles and the Aleutian anchorages, often in heavy fog. In late July 1943 the navy withdrew the Kiska garrison. Wakaba went with the evacuation force under Suetsugu, and the troops were taken off under cover of the weather.
He was relieved on 1 October 1943 by Kanefumi Ninokata. Wakaba remained in service for another year. On 24 October 1944, in the Leyte operation, American carrier aircraft sank her off the west coast of Panay. Ninokata was captain then. Suetsugu had left the ship the autumn before.
He later joined the Second Fleet as a torpedo staff officer. In that billet he embarked in the battleship Yamato for the fleet’s last sortie, the April 1945 run toward Okinawa. On 7 April American carrier planes sank Yamato in the East China Sea, and Suetsugu was killed aboard her. He was a staff officer of the Second Fleet on that ship, and he was not her captain. The navy advanced him in rank after his death.