Ships
- IJN Maikaze Captain from 15 July 1941
Commander Seiji Nakasugi of the Imperial Japanese Navy was the first captain of the destroyer Maikaze. On 10 April 1941, while the ship was still fitting out at the Fujinagata yard in Osaka, the Navy appointed him chief of the fitting-out crew. He came to that duty from earlier commands of the destroyers Hayate and Murakumo. The fitting-out office at the yard opened on 18 April. Maikaze, a Kagerō-class destroyer, had been laid down on 22 April 1940 and launched on 15 March 1941. She was completed on 15 July 1941, and Nakasugi became her captain the same day. The ship was placed on the rolls of the Yokosuka Naval District.
On 1 September 1941 Maikaze and the sister ship Nowaki were designated training and guard destroyers. On 31 October both ships joined Destroyer Division 4, with Arashi and Hagikaze, in Destroyer Squadron 4 of the Second Fleet. That division remained Nakasugi's formation for the whole of his time in command.
Maikaze left the Terashima Strait on 29 November 1941 and reached Mako, in the Pescadores, on 2 December. From 4 December until 11 January 1942 she kept station with Vice Admiral Nobutake Kondō's Main Body, the distant covering force for the landings in Malaya and the Philippines. The ships returned to Mako to fuel, then sailed on 14 January for Palau and the campaign in the Dutch East Indies. In the spring the division took a supporting part in the Japanese raid into the Indian Ocean, and afterward joined the carriers of Vice Admiral Chūichi Nagumo.
In the Battle of Midway in June 1942, Maikaze and Hagikaze stood by the burning carrier Kaga. Nakasugi reported that the carrier could not be taken in tow. Near sunset Kaga exploded, and the blast wrecked Maikaze's gunnery director even though the destroyer lay about a thousand meters off. After Kaga sank, Maikaze and Hagikaze joined Arashi and Nowaki with the flagship Akagi, and the division finished the abandoned carrier with torpedoes.
Maikaze stayed with the carrier screen for the Battle of the Eastern Solomons in August 1942 and the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands in October. On 16 January 1943 the Navy made her the flagship of Destroyer Division 4. The flag moved to Arashi on 14 February. Nakasugi left the ship on 22 June 1943, when Commander Tsutomu Hagio relieved him. Hagio was still in command when Maikaze was sunk northwest of Truk on 17 February 1944.