Ships
- IJN I-168 (I-168) Captain from 15 October 1942 · In command when she was lost, 27 July 1943
Sakae Nakajima was an officer of the Imperial Japanese Navy, a submariner of the Naval Academy's 56th class, who commanded the submarine I-168 from 15 October 1942 until she was sunk by the American submarine Scamp on 27 July 1943 in the Bismarck Archipelago. He went down with her, with the whole crew of 97. He was a lieutenant commander at the time of his death and was promoted commander afterward. I-168 had sunk the carrier Yorktown and the destroyer Hammann at Midway under her previous captain; under Nakajima she carried cargo to Guadalcanal and ammunition to Attu and Kiska, and she died in a duel of surfaced against submerged submarine. The surviving record of the man is a school, a class, a list of commands and a last radio message.
The roll of Naval Academy graduates by class, a Japanese compilation that lists wartime dead, gives Saga Middle School in Saga prefecture as his school. It lists him in the 56th class, which graduated on 16 March 1928, and gives his final rank as commander (chūsa) and his place of death as the Bismarck Islands (I-168, captain). His birth date, family and boyhood have not been found in the sources examined here. The class had 111 graduates, and the same roll lists a number of them, several of them submarine captains, among the wartime dead.
The Naval Academy graduated his class in 1928. The sources examined here do not follow him through the next thirteen years: his ships, his submarine training, and his promotions to lieutenant and lieutenant commander are not recorded in them. The first command in the record is the old submarine Ro-58, completed in 1922, of which he was captain from April 1941 until 31 October 1941. On 31 October 1941 he was appointed captain of the I-57 (renumbered I-157 in May 1942), completed in December 1929, in Submarine Division 19.
The record of the war years is the combined movement record of the submarines, which was compiled from Japanese sources, and it shows him through the movements of his boats.
I-57 under him was part of the patrol line off Trengganu, Malaya, on 8 December 1941, the day of the invasion; went to Camranh Bay in Indochina, and sailed on 28 December to patrol in the Java Sea. On 7 January 1942, south-east of Kangean Island, she surfaced and engaged with her deck gun the 3,077-ton Dutch auxiliary tanker TAN-3 (ex-Djirak) on passage from Balikpapan to Surabaya; the crew left the sinking tanker and was rescued by aircraft the next day. In February her crew contracted dysentery. She was at Kendari in March, at Kure in late March, and in May took part in the Midway operation on a patrol line between 28°20′N 162°20′W and 26°N 165°W. On 10 July 1942 she was assigned to training. I-157's next captain was appointed on 15 October 1942, the day Nakajima was appointed to I-168.
I-168 was a famous boat. At Midway on 6 June 1942, under Lieutenant Commander Yahachi Tanabe, she had penetrated the screen of the damaged Yorktown, torpedoed the destroyer Hammann alongside her and the carrier again, and survived about forty depth charges in a thirteen-hour chase. Nakajima, of the same class as Tanabe, took her over that October after repairs. She sailed from Kure on 15 December 1942 and reached Truk on the twenty-second, and took part in supply missions to Guadalcanal. On 1 January 1943 she arrived there with fifteen tons of cargo but was chased off by two patrol boats after 60 per cent of it had been unloaded; she reached Shortland on 3 January and, by way of Truk, Kure on 14 January.
In the spring she was sent north. She sailed from Yokosuka on 5 March 1943 and reached Paramushiro on 10 March, then ran ammunition to Attu and Kiska. On 15 March, at Holtz Bay, Attu, she was attacked while surfaced by the American submarine S-32, which fired a spread of three torpedoes; all missed. She reached Kiska on 17 March, unloaded, and patrolled south of Amchitka. On 1 April she returned to Kiska with I-169 and took aboard sick men of the garrison and the ground personnel of the 452nd Naval Air Group, and reached Paramushiro on 4 April. She sailed again on 10 April with ammunition and mail, reached Attu on the twelfth, and on 14 April embarked several staff officers there; she delivered her cargo at Kiska on 19 April and returned to Yokosuka on 9 May.
She sailed from Kure on 12 July 1943 and reached Truk on the twenty-second; she left Truk for Rabaul on 25 July. On 27 July she sent a routine situation report while passing through Isabel Strait. It was her last message. At about 1754 that evening, the American account says, she was sighted on the surface in Steffen Strait between New Ireland and New Hanover by the submarine Scamp, Commander Walter G. Ebert. Nine minutes later, as Scamp raised her periscope, I-168 fired a torpedo from some 4,200 yards. Scamp went ahead at full speed and dived to 220 feet and let it pass overhead. At 1812 she returned to periscope depth and fired four torpedoes from her stern tubes. One detonation was heard, a pillar of smoke rose, and five more explosions followed from below. The American history names the boat's commander, "Lt. Comdr. Sakae Nakajima."
On the Japanese side the boat was reported missing after the last message and was declared lost, with all hands, north of Rabaul on 10 September 1943. She was struck from the Navy list on 15 October 1943. The crew numbered 97.
There is nothing after. His family, his marriage if any, and the place where he is remembered are not recorded in the sources examined here. His promotion to commander is recorded as posthumous; the date of it has not been found.