Ships
- IJN Yamagumo Captain from 20 May 1942
Shiro Ono was an officer of the Imperial Japanese Navy whose long last command was the destroyer Yamagumo. On 20 May 1942 he became her captain, relieving Yasuji Koga, and he came to her from the destroyer Sawakaze. He was a lieutenant commander. Yamagumo, one of the Asashio class, was then at Yokosuka in the middle of a long repair. On the last day of 1941 she had struck a Japanese mine while supporting landings in Lingayen Gulf, and the damage had already taken her out of Destroyer Division 9.
Yard work continued through the summer of 1942. On 1 October she was rated a guard destroyer and assigned to the Yokosuka Naval District for patrol and escort work in home waters. Within days Ono was sent to meet Hagikaze, which was coming down from Truk with her propulsion disabled. Yamagumo took the crippled ship in tow and brought her into Yokosuka on 8 October. In December Yamagumo escorted a convoy out toward Saipan, then went back to local duty along the Japanese coast.
On 8 February 1943 Yamagumo left Yokosuka ahead of the transport Tatsuta Maru, which was carrying a large body of passengers toward Truk. That night, east of Mikurajima, the American submarine Tarpon torpedoed the liner and sank her. Ono’s ship had been a kilometer or more in the lead. He heard the explosions, turned back, and signaled to ask what had happened. No answer came. A gale was blowing. He promised a reward to any man who found a trace of the transport, and he held the search until fuel ran short. The sea showed nothing. More than fourteen hundred people were lost with Tatsuta Maru.
Ono kept Yamagumo when, from 10 July to 20 August 1943, he was also appointed temporary captain of Harusame while that destroyer was under repair. Late in August Yamagumo left district service for the Combined Fleet. On 15 September she joined Destroyer Division 4 in the Tenth Squadron. That autumn she took a convoy from Shanghai to Rabaul and was back at Shanghai on 18 October, then made a similar passage in November. She also screened the submarine tender Chogei and the cruiser Kashima.
Before dawn on 19 November 1943, north of Truk, Yamagumo was at sea with the destroyer Wakatsuki on that screen when the American submarine Sculpin was found on the surface. Sculpin dived. Ono pressed the hunt with depth charges through the morning and brought the boat up again. When Sculpin surfaced for a final fight, Yamagumo closed and fired into her with guns and machine guns. Shells hit the conning tower and killed the submarine’s commanding officer. Fire spread aft, and the crew scuttled the boat. Yamagumo sent a boat and took forty-one survivors aboard. Men who still carried the loss of Tatsuta Maru wanted revenge on the prisoners. Ono refused them. The Americans were given coffee and toast and later landed at Truk.
On 25 March 1944 Yamagumo hoisted the flag of the commander of Destroyer Division 4. The flag shifted to Michishio on 10 April. Ono was promoted to commander on 1 May. In June Yamagumo screened ships of the First Mobile Fleet during the Battle of the Philippine Sea. She was still under his command when the navy committed a surface force to the fight for Leyte.
In that operation Yamagumo sailed with Vice Admiral Shoji Nishimura’s Southern Force, alongside the battleships Yamashiro and Fuso, the heavy cruiser Mogami, and the destroyers Michishio, Asagumo, and Shigure. She took fuel from Yamashiro and followed the column into Surigao Strait. Aircraft struck at the force on 24 October. A little after three in the morning on 25 October, American destroyers fired torpedoes up the strait, and hits from McDermut reached Yamagumo. The hull blew apart and the ship went down in about two minutes, near 10°25′ N, 125°23′ E. Two of her crew were saved. Ono was killed. The navy advanced him to captain effective that same day. On 10 January 1945 Yamagumo was removed from the Navy List.