Ships
- IJN Yugiri Captain, 25 October 1943 – 25 November 1943 · Lost with her
Shuichi Otsuji (尾辻秀一) was an officer of the Imperial Japanese Navy from Kagoshima. He came through the 60th class at the Naval Academy at Etajima, a class of 127 men who finished on 19 November 1932. He served as a lieutenant commander.
His command immediately before Yugiri was the destroyer Asanagi. On 25 October 1943 he became captain of Yugiri, and he stayed in that rank for the month he had her.
Yugiri was a Fubuki-class Special Type destroyer, built at Maizuru and in commission since 3 December 1930. The ship he joined had already been roughly handled in the Solomons. On 28 August 1942, dive bombers from Guadalcanal struck Destroyer Division 20 near Santa Isabel. Asagiri sank. Near misses wrecked Yugiri, and thirty-two of her men were killed, Captain Yuji Yamada of the division among them, with about forty more wounded. On 16 May 1943, off Mussau Island, the submarine Grayback torpedoed her and tore off the bow. Nine men died. Amagiri towed the damaged ship to Rabaul. After patching at Truk and a dockyard repair in Japan, she was ready for the south again, and in November 1943 Otsuji took her down.
The work was the traffic to Buka, off the north end of Bougainville, where destroyers were landing soldiers and lifting others out. In company with Amagiri, Uzuki, Onami, and Makinami, Yugiri left Rabaul, made Buka at night, and was back on the morning of 22 November. On 24 November the same five ships sailed for Buka once more, Onami and Makinami as the screen and Amagiri, Yugiri, and Uzuki as the transports.
Off Cape St. George, in the hours before dawn on 25 November, American destroyers met them. Onami and Makinami were sunk at the start of the fight. Yugiri launched nine torpedoes, none of which hit, and then took the gunfire of Charles Ausburne, Claxton, and Dyson. That gunfire sank her about fifty nautical miles east of the cape, around 1:30 in the morning. The sinking is not pinned to any one of the three. Otsuji died in Yugiri. The submarine I-177 saved 278 of her crew, and I-181 saved 11 more. The Navy took Yugiri off the list in December 1943.