Pacific ships

IJN · Lieutenant Commander

Terauchi, Saburo

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Ships

Saburo Terauchi was a lieutenant commander in the Imperial Japanese Navy whose known wartime sea commands were two destroyers. He led the older Mochizuki from the autumn of 1940 through the first southern offensives, then moved to Nenohi in the spring of 1942. He was still captain of Nenohi when that ship was lost on 4 July 1942.

He took command of Mochizuki on 15 October 1940, relieving Ryokichi Sugama. She was a Mutsuki-class destroyer completed in the late 1920s. By the opening of the Pacific War the navy was using ships of her generation to escort troop convoys and to cover landings. Under Terauchi she served with the Fourth Fleet and worked from Truk.

In December 1941 Mochizuki went with the force sent against Wake Island. The attempt to land on 11 December was driven off, and the ships withdrew. A second landing, on 23 December, took the atoll. In January 1942 she escorted troops from Kwajalein to Truk and on to Guam. Through February and March she covered the seizures of Rabaul and nearby islands in the Bismarcks, then the landings at Lae and Salamaua on the New Guinea coast. Terauchi was relieved on 6 April 1942. The destroyer stayed on southern service after he left. Goro Iwabuchi was her captain when United States Navy patrol aircraft sank her south of Rabaul on 24 October 1943, during a transport run along the New Britain coast.

His next ship was Nenohi, which he joined on 20 April 1942. She was a Hatsuharu-class destroyer of Destroyer Division 21. On 3 and 4 May the division swept for submarines south of Shikoku and along the eastern coast of Kyushu. Later in May Nenohi shifted north to the Ōminato Guard District for the Aleutian operation. Into the early summer she patrolled the waters around Attu, Kiska, and Amchitka with Vice Admiral Boshirō Hosogaya’s northern force.

On 4 July 1942, southeast of Attu and near Agattu, Nenohi was screening the seaplane tender Kamikawa Maru when the American submarine Triton torpedoed her. The blow rolled the destroyer over, and she went down within a few minutes. One hundred eighty-eight of her crew were killed. Terauchi and several others climbed onto the upturned hull, gave a last cheer for Nenohi, and were lost with her. The destroyer Inazuma rescued thirty-eight survivors.