Ships
- IJN Yunagi Captain from 15 April 1942
Lieutenant Commander Seiichi Okada took command of the Imperial Japanese Navy destroyer Yunagi on 15 April 1942. She was a Kamikaze-class ship of Destroyer Division 29, built at Sasebo and completed in April 1925, and she had carried the name Yunagi since 1928. Okada relieved Masao Yamashita while the destroyer lay in the yard at Sasebo. A bomb hit off Lae and Salamaua on 10 March had wrecked her machinery spaces, killed twenty-nine men, and wounded about forty more. Patching at Rabaul and Truk had been enough only to get her home.
The dockyard finished the work on 1 June. Yunagi shifted to Moji, and from 5 to 20 June Okada escorted seven army transports of the South Seas Detachment from Moji to Palau. From 25 to 28 June he covered the transport Montevideo Maru. On 9 July he left Palau with the transports Ayatosan Maru and Ryoyo Maru and brought them into Rabaul on 14 July. On 10 July the 6th Destroyer Squadron was dissolved, and Division 29, still including Yunagi, passed to the 2nd Surface Escort Force under the 4th Fleet.
On 7 August American troops landed on Guadalcanal and Tulagi. Yunagi was in Rabaul with the light cruisers Tenryu and Yubari. Vice Admiral Gunichi Mikawa was already taking the heavy cruisers Chokai, Aoba, Kinugasa, Kako, and Furutaka south, and Yunagi joined that force the same afternoon. In the Battle of Savo Island, on the night of 8–9 August, Mikawa sent her northwest of Savo Island against two American destroyers reported there. The heavy cruiser Chicago fired on her and missed. She then exchanged gunfire with the destroyer Jarvis. Neither ship was hit, and Yunagi came back with the cruisers early on 9 August.
She was at sea again within two days. On the night of 11 August she left Rabaul with Oite, shelled Henderson Field on Guadalcanal on the 13th, and returned the next day. From 19 August she helped set up the seaplane base at Rekata, on Santa Isabel. On the 21st the 8th Fleet ordered Yunagi and Kawakaze into Lunga Roads. A heavy sea held Yunagi to 22 knots, so Kawakaze went in alone, sank the American destroyer Blue, and met her again on the way to Shortland. During the Battle of the Eastern Solomons on 24–25 August, Okada kept Yunagi with the heavy cruisers covering the reinforcement convoy. She remained in the Solomons through the end of the month. In early September she took part in the seizures of Nauru and Ocean Island, then settled into escort work with the 2nd Surface Escort Force through the Solomons and the Marshalls.
On 15 October she was at Tarawa when the heavy cruiser Portland shelled the anchorage for about half an hour. Yunagi first reported the attacker as a battleship. The Japanese ships there took only light damage, and Portland withdrew. In the middle of November Okada escorted the training cruiser Kashima, with Asanagi in company, on an inspection of the Marshalls that took in Kwajalein, Roi, Imiej, and Jaluit. Asanagi stayed in the islands. Kashima and Yunagi reached Truk on 2 December, and the destroyer went back to convoy duty. On 18 March 1943 she entered Sasebo to be rebuilt as a fast transport, with heavier antiaircraft guns and room for landing craft. During that refit the command passed to Masanori Kashima. Yunagi later returned to the Solomons and, under Goro Iwabuchi, was torpedoed and sunk by the submarine Picuda off northwestern Luzon on 25 August 1944.