Ships
- IJN Fujinami Captain from 31 July 1943 · In command when she was lost, 27 October 1944
Tatsuji Matsuzaki was a commander in the Imperial Japanese Navy and the only officer who commanded the destroyer Fujinami. A graduate of the Naval Academy’s 52nd class, he had already commanded the minelayer Katata. On 1 July 1943, while the new Yugumo-class ship was finishing at the Fujinagata yard in Osaka, he was appointed her fitting-out officer. She was completed on 31 July 1943, and that day he became her commanding officer. A wartime photograph shows him with the ship.
She began in the training side of Destroyer Squadron 11. On 20 August 1943 she joined Destroyer Division 32. Through the rest of that summer Matsuzaki took her between Tokuyama, Yokosuka, and the Inland Sea, including a run in company with the battleship Yamashiro. On 30 September the division passed to Destroyer Squadron 2 of the Second Fleet. In mid-October Fujinami helped escort Yamashiro and the battleship Ise on a troop lift from Saeki toward Truk.
On 5 November 1943, during an air raid on Rabaul, an aircraft torpedo struck Fujinami and failed to explode. One man was killed and nine were wounded. She stayed in service on escort and transport work. In June 1944 she was with the fleet at the Battle of the Philippine Sea. In August she screened convoy HI-71 on a voyage south in which the carrier Taiyo and the oiler Hayasui were lost. After that passage Destroyer Division 32 gathered at Lingga and trained for the fleet’s next large sortie.
In October 1944 Fujinami sailed with Vice Admiral Takeo Kurita’s First Diversion Attack Force for the Battle of Leyte Gulf. Air attack on 24 and 25 October left her lightly damaged by near misses and strafing. On the morning of 25 October, off Samar, Kurita sent her to the heavy cruiser Chokai, which gunfire and bombs had left unable to steam. Matsuzaki stood by the cruiser, took her men aboard, and sank the abandoned ship with a torpedo.
Men from the American escort carrier Gambier Bay, lost in the same action, later said that as they drifted past Fujinami Matsuzaki held his crew back from firing on them, and that he saluted from the ship. They remembered the gesture long afterward and looked for his photograph.
Fujinami was still crowded with the Chokai survivors when, on 27 October 1944, she was sent toward the damaged destroyer Hayashimo. Aircraft from the carrier Essex caught her about eighty miles north of Iloilo. She went down with everyone aboard, and Matsuzaki was killed in the ship he had commanded since commissioning. A promotion to the rank of captain was recorded for him on that date. Fujinami was removed from the Navy list on 10 December 1944.