Ships
- IJN Ikazuchi Captain from 27 August 1942 · Relieved on 25 October 1943
- IJN Isokaze Captain from 1 November 1943 · In command when she was lost, 7 April 1945
Saneho Maeda (前田實穂) was an officer of the Imperial Japanese Navy. No birth date, hometown, Naval Academy class, or photograph has turned up for him, and nothing read here says what became of him after the war.
On 27 August 1942 he relieved Hagemi Ishii in command of the destroyer Ikazuchi. Shunsaku Kudo had been the captain before Ishii. Crew accounts from that ship call Maeda a hard captain. They say the discipline was tight, the ship-handling drew complaints, and the men disliked him after Kudo. He had Ikazuchi for the night action off Guadalcanal on 13 November 1942. She was damaged and got away. He was still in her for the battleship night two days later. Kunio Ikunaga relieved him on 25 October 1943.
He took command of Isokaze on 1 November 1943, as a lieutenant commander. By the time she was lost he was a commander. Accounts from her crew use the same word for him: strict. They say the ship was run more tightly than some of her sisters, and that the men came to respect the way he handled her. Those are crew memories, not an official report.
Isokaze was already a veteran when he came aboard. Under him she was at the Philippine Sea in June 1944 and off Samar on 25 October 1944. One account of that morning says he ordered the crew not to fire on men in the water. No American ship lost off Samar is credited to Isokaze.
On 7 April 1945 he still had her, in the escort of Yamato and Yahagi, bound for Okinawa. She tried to go alongside the crippled Yahagi and was driven off by the air attack. Near misses left her without steering or power. Twenty men were killed and fifty-four wounded. Yukikaze took off the survivors, Maeda among them. The loss of the ship is credited to the air attack, not to Yukikaze.