Ships
- IJN Shikinami Captain from 1 April 1944
Tatsuhiko Takahashi was a lieutenant commander of the Imperial Japanese Navy and a graduate of the sixty-first class of the Naval Academy. He commanded the destroyer Wakatake from June 1943 and the destroyer Shikinami from 1 April 1944. He was killed on 12 September 1944, when the American submarine Growler sank Shikinami in the South China Sea while she was escorting convoy HI-72 from Singapore toward Japan.
Nothing is known of his birth, family, or schooling.
He was a member of the sixty-first class at Etajima. The movement record of Shikinami gives his class and says he came to her from command of Wakatake. The Japanese list of Wakatake's captains shows him taking that ship on 10 June 1943. No earlier posting has been found.
The sources show nothing of his time in Wakatake beyond the dates. She was a Wakatake-class destroyer. The Japanese list has his successor, a lieutenant, taking her on 10 March 1944, so he had left her by then.
On 1 April 1944 he relieved Lieutenant Commander Shōzō Michiki in Shikinami at Singapore, where she was in dock until 26 April. She was a Fubuki-class destroyer attached to the 16th Cruiser Division in the Southwest Area. On 28 April she escorted a convoy from Singapore to Surabaya. From 2 to 11 May she ran from Surabaya through Ambon, Biak, and Manado to Tarakan on a transport mission. In the middle of May she escorted the cruisers Aoba and Ōi from Tarakan by way of Davao to Palau, and in the second half of May she accompanied them on two troop runs from Palau to Sorong. At the end of May she escorted Aoba and Kinu from Tarakan by way of Zamboanga to Davao for the Biak operation.
On 2 June the troop run to Biak was aborted because the enemy had found it, and she went on to Sorong. On 8 June, as flagship of the division commander, Rear Admiral Naomasa Sakonju, she led another run toward Biak. It was turned back by enemy interception. In an air attack she was strafed, her burning depth charges were jettisoned, and two men were killed and four wounded. She also engaged an Allied cruiser and destroyer group. She withdrew by way of Sorong to Batjan on 11 June. From late June to mid-July she escorted convoys from Manado by way of Davao, Tarakan, Balikpapan, and Surabaya to Singapore, and then went on to Manila. On 18 to 22 July she escorted the cruiser Ōi out of Manila, and on 19 July, when Ōi was torpedoed, she rescued survivors. In late July she was in dock at Singapore, where ten single 25-millimeter machine guns were added along her length. A Japanese account says that on 1 August 1944 she ran aground off Singapore and got clear again.
On 6 September she left Singapore escorting convoy HI-72. In the early hours of 12 September, at 1:55 a.m., the submarine Growler put a torpedo into the escort commander's flagship, the coast-defense ship Hirado, which disappeared in a flash with Rear Admiral Sadamichi Kajioka aboard. With the flagship gone and the convoy under attack by a group of American submarines, Shikinami swept for submarines. At 6:55 a.m. Growler hit her again with two torpedoes in quick succession, in the sea east of Hainan, and she sank in four minutes. Takahashi and most of the crew were lost. Survivors were picked up by the escort vessel Mikura.
Shikinami was struck from the navy list on 10 October 1944.