Ships
- IJN Samidare Captain from 1 March 1944
Tokuta Nishimura was a lieutenant commander of the Imperial Japanese Navy and a graduate of the sixtieth class of the Naval Academy. He commanded the destroyer Asakaze on convoy escort in the Southwest Area from October 1942 until March 1944. He then took the destroyer Samidare through the Biak operation and the Battle of the Philippine Sea. On 2 July 1944 he left her, sick, and went into hospital.
Nothing is known of his birth, family, or schooling.
He was in the sixtieth class at Etajima. The sources give no posting earlier than his command of Asakaze.
On 20 October 1942 he relieved Lieutenant Commander Michiki in Asakaze, a Kamikaze-class destroyer then on convoy escort duty in the Java Sea, and he held her for seventeen months. The ship was part of the 5th Destroyer Division, which was broken up on 25 February 1943 and its ships reassigned to the 1st Surface Escort Division of the Southwest Area Fleet. She spent the following year on escort duty between Moji, Takao, Saigon, and Singapore. She left Saigon on 28 February 1943 for the Moji–Takao run and escorted a convoy from Takao to Moji in April and May. On 23 May she reached Sasebo and was refitted. She resumed convoy work on 19 July. In October she escorted convoy HI-13 from Moji to Singapore, and in December she escorted convoys from Sasebo to Takao and Moji to Takao, among them HI-27.
On 1 March 1944 he was appointed to command the destroyer Samidare, of the Shiratsuyu class, and Lieutenant Osamu Yamaguchi took over Asakaze. At the end of March Samidare led the escort of a troop convoy from Yokosuka to Saipan. In April she escorted convoys from Saipan to Truk and Palau. On 26–27 April she accompanied the light cruiser Yūbari on a troop run from Palau to Sonsorol, and when Yūbari was torpedoed she helped the destroyer Yūzuki rescue survivors. In May she escorted convoys from Davao by way of Balikpapan to Tawitawi.
At the end of May she escorted the 5th Cruiser Division from Tawitawi to Davao for the Biak operation. She covered a troop run to Biak on 2 June that was aborted because the enemy had found it, and went on to Sorong. On 8 June she covered a second run, and the run was broken off when the force was intercepted. She engaged an Allied cruiser and destroyer group and retired through Batjan to Balikpapan. From 14 to 18 June she escorted the Third Supply Force from Balikpapan to meet Admiral Ozawa's fleet in the Philippine Sea, and on 19–20 June she escorted Force B under Admiral Jōshima in the battle.
On 2 July 1944 the movement record has him relieved and hospitalized because of illness, and Lieutenant Commander Yasunosuke Okuma took command. Samidare went on without him. She ran aground on Velasco Reef near Palau and was torpedoed by the submarine Batfish, and she was lost on 25 August 1944.
The sources checked do not say what happened to him after he went into hospital.