Ships
- IJN Nagatsuki Captain from 1 June 1943
Tameo Furukawa was a lieutenant commander of the Imperial Japanese Navy and a graduate of the sixtieth class of the Naval Academy. In the summer of 1943 he commanded the destroyer Nagatsuki in the Solomon Islands for five weeks, and on the night of 5–6 July, after the Battle of Kula Gulf, he lost her on the shoals at the entrance to Bambari Harbor on the coast of Kolombangara. He then spent nearly a month ashore with the garrison before an order was issued to fly him out. He commanded a second destroyer, Yūnagi, for sixteen days that autumn.
Nothing is known of his birth, family, or home prefecture. The sources identify him only by his name, his class at the academy, and the posts he held.
He belonged to the sixtieth class of the Naval Academy at Etajima. Before he took a command of his own, according to the movement record, he was torpedo officer of the heavy cruiser Myōkō.
On 1 June 1943 he relieved Lieutenant Commander Ninokata in Nagatsuki at Buin, on the southern end of Bougainville. She was a Mutsuki-class destroyer, then employed mainly on troop and supply runs. The ship had only days earlier gone aground with her sister Satsuki on a reef southeast of Bougainville and been refloated. On the afternoon of 2 June she left Buin with Minazuki and that evening landed 473 men and forty tons of fuel in drums on Kolombangara. Over the following four weeks she made runs to Tuluvu on New Britain, an aborted run toward Kolombangara in company with Mikazuki and Minazuki, and a Rendova bombardment sortie on 30 June that was cancelled because of weather. On 2–3 July she took part, with Yūbari and eight other destroyers, in the bombardment of Rendova.
On the night of 4–5 July, leaving Buin with Niizuki, Satsuki, and Yūnagi on a troop run to Kolombangara, she met an American force at the entrance to Kula Gulf. Niizuki's radar had found it. Nagatsuki fired torpedoes at 10:35 p.m. and contributed to the spread that sank the American destroyer Strong. The run was aborted and she returned to Buin.
The next night she went back. On 5 July she left the Shortlands with the second transport unit. About midnight the transport unit was recalled by Niizuki to join the fighting, and Nagatsuki opened fire at 12:18 a.m. on 6 July. She broke off at 12:34 laying smoke, with one six-inch shell hit, and headed south to resume her transport mission. At 12:49 she ran aground on the shoals at the southern side of the entrance to Bambari Harbor. The movement record attributes this to an error in navigation, going too fast and too close to shore, or possibly to an attempt to enter the harbor for a time.
By 3:50 a.m. Satsuki had taken off the division commander, Captain Kunizo Kanaoka, and had tried without success to pull the ship free. The decision was then made to evacuate the troops and crew, to avoid losses in the air attacks expected after sunrise. About fourteen boatloads of men went ashore, Furukawa among them, joined by army barges that came into the harbor. Disembarkation was complete by 4:20. Carrier aircraft bombed the ship at about 8:10 a.m., and at 12:35 p.m. Army B-25s bombed her when no one was aboard. Her forward magazines exploded. Because the evacuation had been done before the attack, casualties were light, eight dead and thirteen injured.
The crew stayed with the garrison for weeks. On 1 August it was ordered that the survivors, among them seven officers including Furukawa, be moved to Buin in fishing boats. On 2 August an order was issued for Air Group 938 to fly him from Kolombangara to Buin when practicable. Nagatsuki was removed from the navy list on 1 October 1943.
On 20 October he was given command of Yūnagi, relieving Lieutenant Commander Masanori Kashima. The ship made a troop run to Cape Dampier the next day and, on 31 October, set out for Garove Island and Iboki but turned back because of the American landings on Bougainville. On 5 November Lieutenant Commander Gorō Iwabuchi relieved him.
The sources checked do not record what Furukawa did after 5 November 1943, or whether he survived the war.