Ships
- IJN Ariake Captain from 15 October 1940
- IJN Urakaze Captain from 20 August 1943
Commander Shoichi Yoshida was an Imperial Japanese Navy destroyer officer of the Naval Academy's 52nd class. His two recorded wartime commands were the Hatsuharu-class destroyer Ariake, which he captained from 15 October 1940, and the Kagero-class destroyer Urakaze, which he captained from 20 August 1943. He joined Ariake as a lieutenant commander and was a commander by the time he moved to Urakaze.
Ariake served in Destroyer Division 27. From 15 November 1940 the division formed part of Destroyer Squadron 1, under the light cruiser Abukuma, with the other destroyer divisions of the First Fleet. The first stretch of his command was the training cycle of a fleet destroyer as Japan prepared for war. Once the Pacific War began, the division worked with the carrier striking forces.
At the Battle of the Coral Sea in May 1942, Yoshida later described Ariake as fighting in the close anti-aircraft screen of the carrier Zuikaku while Shokaku was damaged by bombs. On 17 May, Destroyer Division 27 left the South Seas striking force, and Ariake, Shigure, and Shiratsuyu escorted the heavy cruisers Myoko and Haguro from Truk toward home waters. At the end of that month his ship was with the Main Body that left the western Inland Sea on 29 May for the Midway operation. He reported Ariake as escort to the light carrier Hosho. The operation was cancelled on 6 June after the loss of the carrier force, and the Main Body was back in Japan by mid-month.
On 27 August 1942, during operations off the Solomons, Ariake and Yugure were assigned to Vice Admiral Gunichi Mikawa's Outer South Seas Force. Before dawn on 4 September the reinforcement groups sailed from Shortland. Ariake went with Uranami and Shikinami and helped land about a thousand soldiers of the Aoba and Ichiki detachments on Guadalcanal. She remained in the supply runs through the autumn. On the night of 11–12 December, during the fourth drum-can transport, American motor torpedo boats attacked the landing force and sank Rear Admiral Raizo Tanaka's flagship Teruzuki. Ariake was in that formation, together with Urakaze and Tanikaze of Destroyer Division 17.
On 25 December 1942 the submarine Seadragon torpedoed the transport Nankai Maru. The escorting destroyer Uzuki collided with the damaged ship and lost the ability to steam. Ariake took Uzuki in tow and was then moderately damaged by B-24 bombers, after which Urakaze took over the tow and Naganami covered the ships back toward Rabaul. From mid-January 1943 Ariake underwent repair at Sasebo. The work was finished in mid-February, and she returned to escort duty between Japan, Truk, and Rabaul. Orders of 15 July 1943 named Akifumi Kawahashi as her next captain. Yoshida remembered leaving the ship on 9 July. The formal relief found Ariake at sea with Asanagi, escorting two tankers out of Truk. On 27–28 July, during a run from Rabaul toward Tuluvu, Ariake and Mikazuki grounded near Cape Gloucester and were destroyed by B-25s. Kawahashi was killed and was promoted to commander on the day of his death.
Yoshida was appointed captain of Urakaze on 20 August 1943. The ship's first commanding officer, from her commissioning in December 1940, had been Nagayoshi Shiraishi. She was a unit of Destroyer Division 17, with Tanikaze, Isokaze, and Hamakaze, and she had already screened the carriers from Pearl Harbor through the Indian Ocean raid, Midway, and the Solomons. On 7 September Yoshida sailed her from Yokosuka with the escort carriers Taiyo and Chuyo and reached Truk on the 11th. On 18 September she went with the Combined Fleet toward Eniwetok after American carrier raids in the central Pacific, arrived too late to meet them, and was back at Truk on the 25th. In those first months he kept her on the convoy and fleet-escort work that had occupied her through 1943, including troop movements toward New Guinea.
In October Captain Toshio Miyazaki, commander of Destroyer Division 17, embarked and kept his pennant in Urakaze. American carrier aircraft struck Rabaul on 5 and 11 November 1943, and the destroyer received only light strafing damage. Yoshida remembered a torpedo plane that released late, the torpedo passing over the funnel. The raid of the 11th sank Suzunami, left Naganami unable to move, and put a torpedo into the stern of the light cruiser Agano, flagship of Destroyer Squadron 10. Rear Admiral Morikazu Osugi was wounded. Urakaze was sent to escort Agano toward Truk. Early on 12 November the submarine Scamp hit the cruiser amidships, stopped her, and killed about ninety of her men. On a glassy sea Urakaze spent the following hours keeping the submarine from a second attack, then took the injured admiral off the crippled flagship.
On 30 November a force of the light carrier Zuiho, the escort carriers Unyo and Chuyo, the heavy cruiser Maya, and the destroyers Akebono, Sazanami, Ushio, and Urakaze left Truk for Yokosuka. On 4 December the submarine Sailfish sank Chuyo, and Urakaze joined in picking up survivors before continuing to Kure for repair and upkeep. In December Captain Tamotsu Tanii succeeded Miyazaki in command of the division and retained the pennant in the destroyer. Yoshida stayed as captain until 15 May 1944, when Yasuteru Yokota relieved him. Yokota still had Urakaze at the Battle of the Philippine Sea in June. On 21 November 1944, while she was escorting the battleships Kongo and Nagato in the strait north of Formosa, a torpedo from the submarine Sealion sank her with all hands. Yokota died with the ship and was promoted to commander that day. Yoshida, by then a captain, later gave a firsthand account of the Ariake and Urakaze years that is remembered for its steady, exact detail of anti-aircraft screens, night landings, and rescues at sea.