Ships
- IJN Shirayuki Captain from 15 November 1940
Commander Rokuro Sugawara took command of the Imperial Japanese Navy destroyer Shirayuki on 15 November 1940. She was the second ship of the Fubuki class, completed in 1928, and she served in Destroyer Division 11. An earlier commanding officer of the same destroyer was Zenji Ichimon, who held her for a few months in 1938.
Sugawara came to a seasoned fleet destroyer. Ships of her class had been built with a heavy battery of guns and torpedoes, and in the years after they entered service they stood among the strongest destroyers afloat. Her recent duty had been patrol work along the China coast. His command opened as the navy gathered ships for the move into Southeast Asia.
In December 1941 Shirayuki was with Destroyer Division 11 of Destroyer Squadron 3 in the First Fleet. The division had shifted from the Kure Naval District to Samah on Hainan. From 4 December 1941 through February 1942, Sugawara's ship covered landings in Malaya, at the Anambas Islands, and in British Borneo.
The division stayed with the advance into the Netherlands East Indies. On the night of 28 February and the morning of 1 March 1942, Shirayuki was among the Japanese ships that fought in the Sunda Strait, a battle that ended with the loss of the Allied cruisers Houston and Perth. Later that year her work moved into the Solomon Islands and the fight for Guadalcanal. In February 1943 she took part in the evacuation of the Japanese garrison from the island.
Late in February 1943 the Eighth Fleet gathered a convoy at Rabaul to carry army troops to Lae, on the north coast of New Guinea. Rear Admiral Masatomi Kimura, newly in command of Destroyer Squadron 3, shifted his flag from the light cruiser Sendai to Shirayuki. With that flag aboard, Sugawara's ship led the escort, Asashio, Arashio, Shikinami, Uranami, Asagumo, Yukikaze, and Tokitsukaze, guarding eight transports.
On 3 March Allied bombers found the convoy in the Bismarck Sea. A bomb exploded in Shirayuki's after magazine and tore away her stern. She hung bow-up and sank at about 9:05 that morning, roughly 55 nautical miles southeast of Finschhafen. Thirty-two of her crew were killed. Machine-gun fire had already left Admiral Kimura badly wounded. Shikinami took off the survivors, Sugawara among them. His command is dated through 20 March 1943, and the navy struck Shirayuki from service on 1 April.
Those months made Sugawara the captain of Shirayuki for the whole of her Pacific War. He took her out from Hainan in December 1941 and stayed with her through the southern landings, the Sunda Strait, and the Solomons. He was still her commanding officer on the morning she sank, and he lived through that day with the men rescued by Shikinami.