Ships
- IJN Nachi Captain from 10 September 1943 · Relieved on 20 August 1944
Shiro Shibuya was born on 18 November 1893 in Ina village, Kamiina district, Nagano Prefecture. He graduated from the Naval Academy in November 1916 with the forty-fourth class, thirty-second of ninety-five, and was commissioned an ensign in 1917. He completed the advanced course at the Torpedo School, and torpedo duty shaped nearly the whole of his time at sea.
He served as torpedo officer in four ships and then commanded the destroyers Karukaya, Namikaze, and Inazuma, with a stretch as an instructor at the Torpedo School between the second and third of those commands. Promoted commander in November 1934, he became executive officer of the light cruiser Jintsu in December 1936. He next led Torpedo Division 1 and, from December 1938, Destroyer Division 27. On 15 November 1939 he was promoted captain and given Minesweeper Division 1. Command of Destroyer Division 7 followed in May 1940, and on 25 July 1941 he took Destroyer Division 16.
Division 16, with Shibuya embarked in Yukikaze, entered the Pacific War with the Southern Force. He led it through the opening southern landings, the Battle of the Java Sea in February 1942, and the Battle of Midway in June, when the division screened the occupation force. On 20 September 1942 he left the destroyers for the light cruiser Abukuma. In her he served with the Northern Force at the Battle of the Komandorski Islands on 26 March 1943, and again in July when the navy lifted the garrison from Kiska.
On 10 September 1943 he relieved Akira Sone as captain of the heavy cruiser Nachi at Paramushiro. A few days before the turnover, a torpedo from the submarine Halibut had passed through the cruiser's belt and failed to explode. Nachi remained in the northern anchorage for about six weeks, then refitted at Sasebo. She sailed from that yard on 22 January 1944, fueled at Tokuyama on 6 February, and reached Ominato on 9 February with the destroyer Usugumo. Through the spring and early summer she worked the northern waters of Japan. From 2 April her sister Ashigara shared the Ominato guard. On 31 July the two cruisers left for Kure with destroyers in company. In August Nachi lay in the Inland Sea for drills while more anti-aircraft guns were fitted, and the pair were brought into Cruiser Division 21.
Shibuya was relieved on 20 August 1944, and Enpei Kanooka took Nachi. That autumn the cruiser went south as flagship of Kiyohide Shima and was sunk by carrier aircraft in Manila Bay on 5 November 1944, with Kanooka among the dead. Shibuya had already gone to the staff of the Maritime Escort Command. He was promoted rear admiral on 15 October 1944 and, from 15 November, commanded the 101st Escort Squadron.
His flagship was the former training cruiser Kashii, now used for escort work. In December 1944 he took convoy HI-85 through from Japan to Saint-Jacques in Indochina. Early in January 1945 the squadron joined convoy HI-86 at Saigon, a group of tankers and cargo ships on the return run. On 12 January, off the Indochina coast, aircraft from Admiral William F. Halsey's carriers struck the convoy during the raid into the South China Sea. Kashii was torpedoed and sank. Shibuya was killed. He was fifty-one, and his final rank was vice admiral.