Ships
- IJN Takao Captain from 28 October 1943
Shigechika Hayashi (林彙邇) was a captain in the Imperial Japanese Navy. On 28 October 1943 he took command of the heavy cruiser Takao at Truk, in the Caroline Islands, relieving Toshihira Inoguchi. Takao was the name ship of a class of four heavy cruisers, with ten 20-centimeter guns, a heavy torpedo armament, and the tall bridge that marked the class.
The ship he inherited had already served through the first two years of the Pacific War. Bunji Asakura had commanded her from August 1941 to February 1943, including the landings on Luzon, the Aleutian operation, and the fighting for Guadalcanal. Inoguchi then kept her with the fleet at Truk, where she helped cover the evacuation of Guadalcanal, and brought her back to Japan in the summer of 1943 for a refit that added anti-aircraft guns. Hayashi assumed command after she had returned to Truk.
His first operation followed within days. After American troops landed on Bougainville at the start of November, Japanese heavy cruisers gathered at Rabaul on New Britain to strike the invasion shipping, and Takao went with them. On 5 November 1943, while she was refueling in the harbor, dive bombers from the carriers Saratoga and Princeton attacked the anchorage. Takao was hit. The bombs killed 23 of her men and damaged her steering, and she was sent back to Yokosuka for dockyard repairs.
The repairs kept her in Japan into the early months of 1944. Workers restored the damaged steering and fitted additional anti-aircraft guns and radar, the sort of extra defense Japanese heavy cruisers were receiving as carrier aircraft grew more dangerous. Hayashi remained in command through the yard period and through her return to the Combined Fleet.
In June 1944 he took Takao into the Battle of the Philippine Sea. She sailed in the van of the First Mobile Fleet with the other ships of her class, under Vice Admiral Takeo Kurita, during the Japanese attempt to stop the American seizure of the Marianas. Carrier aircraft decided the battle and destroyed most of the Japanese naval air groups sent into it. Takao came through and stayed in commission under Hayashi until 29 August 1944, when Captain Sutejiro Onoda relieved him. Takeo Ishisaka became her captain in March 1945, in the last months of the war.