Ships
- IJN Tanikaze Captain from 25 April 1943
Shinichiro Maekawa was a career officer of the Imperial Japanese Navy whose commands lay almost entirely in destroyers. He was born on 6 July 1900, graduated in the Naval Academy’s 50th class ranked 87th of 272, and afterward passed through the torpedo school and the gunnery school. He held the rank of commander through his wartime sea command. He was killed on 13 June 1945 and was promoted rear admiral the same day.
His first specialist billets were in the torpedo department. On 5 September 1930 he joined the destroyer Harukaze as torpedo officer and division officer. On 28 January 1932 he became a division officer in the battleship Nagato, and on 6 September 1932 he returned to destroyers as torpedo officer of Shirakumo. His first command came on 1 June 1934, the destroyer Kiku. From 15 November 1934 he commanded Kisaragi and Mutsuki. Shore duty followed, with attachment to a temporary coastal-defense unit from October 1935 and adjutant and staff work at the naval station at Port Arthur from April 1936.
In June 1938 he became an adjutant on the staff of the Fourth Fleet. That November he was at sea again as commanding officer of Hatsuharu. He moved to Shirakumo in November 1939 and, on 15 November 1940, took the Kagero-class destroyer Kuroshio. He left Kuroshio on 10 September 1941 for an adjutant’s post at the Naval Academy and was still there when the Pacific War began. On 10 April 1943 he was attached briefly to the Tenth Squadron, and fifteen days later he was ordered to a destroyer.
On 25 April 1943 Commander Maekawa became commanding officer of Tanikaze. He relieved Kiyoshi Tomura, who had held the ship since 25 January. Tomura had come after Motoi Katsumi was killed on 15 January 1943 by bomb fragments in an American air attack during a troop run toward Guadalcanal. Tanikaze, a Kagero-class ship of Destroyer Division 17, had been launched at the Fujinagata yard in Osaka on 1 November 1940 and commissioned on 25 April 1941. She had already screened the carrier force from the opening of the war and had spent long months on the Solomon Islands passage.
Maekawa’s first work in her was escort duty in the central Pacific. From 28 April to 1 May 1943 Tanikaze escorted the supply ship Irako from Truk toward Iwo Jima, and further transport and escort runs followed. In the middle of May she went north with a convoy, reached Yokosuka on 18 May, and entered the yard for a full overhaul. After that refit she returned south. On the night of 5–6 July 1943 she was in Kula Gulf with the Japanese destroyers covering a troop landing on Kolombangara when American cruisers intercepted the force. Torpedoes from the Japanese destroyers sank the light cruiser Helena, and Tanikaze was among the ships that fired in that night action.
The rest of his time in Tanikaze was taken up with escort work, including several missions screening the carrier Junyo. On 8 November 1943 Lieutenant Commander Shunsaku Ikeda relieved him. Ikeda was still in command on 9 June 1944, when the submarine Harder torpedoed Tanikaze in the Sibutu Passage near Tawi-Tawi. The destroyer sank quickly, and Ikeda died of his wounds two days later.
From the destroyer Maekawa went to a staff post in the Yokosuka defense command. On 5 October 1944 he took command of the Oshima Defense Unit and the 22nd Transport Unit. From 20 December 1944 he served on escort staff and on the staff of the Okinawa Area Naval Base, and from February 1945 his duty was with that Okinawa staff. He was killed in action on 13 June 1945, while the battle for Okinawa was still being fought.