Ships
- IJN Asagumo Captain from 20 August 1941
Commander Tooru Iwahashi became captain of the Imperial Japanese Navy destroyer Asagumo on 20 August 1941. He took her in the last months of peace, when the fleet was already gathered for a drive into Southeast Asia. Asagumo was an Asashio-class fleet destroyer, armed with six 12.7-centimeter guns and eight torpedo tubes, and built to screen heavier ships or to guard a convoy of army transports.
She belonged to Destroyer Division 9 with Minegumo, Natsugumo, and Yamagumo. The division served in Destroyer Squadron 4, whose flagship was the light cruiser Naka under Rear Admiral Shoji Nishimura. Through the late summer and autumn of 1941 the squadron exercised as a unit and moved into the forces assigned to the Philippine and Netherlands East Indies landings.
In December 1941 Asagumo went south with that squadron for the invasion of the Philippines. Under Iwahashi she screened transports bound for Lingayen Gulf, on the west coast of Luzon, where the main body of Japanese troops went ashore on 22 December. During the landing she patrolled the approaches and held her station in Nishimura's destroyer line.
In January 1942 the squadron continued into the Netherlands East Indies. Asagumo covered the capture of Tarakan, on the east coast of Borneo, and then the larger landing at Balikpapan. On the night of 24 January four American destroyers entered the Balikpapan roadstead, torpedoed and shelled the transports at anchor, and retired to sea. The raid sank several ships of the invasion force while Asagumo and the other Japanese warships with the landing were still trying to fix the attack.
Her hardest action came on 27 February 1942 in the Battle of the Java Sea. In the afternoon fight Asagumo closed the British destroyer Electra, and the two ships traded gunfire at short range. Electra was hit repeatedly, lost headway, and sank. Shells in return struck Asagumo, burst in her engineering spaces, killed members of her crew, and cut her speed. Iwahashi's ship dropped out of Nishimura's formation and left the battle.
Iwahashi had been captain of Asagumo since 20 August 1941, and he carried her from peacetime drills through the Philippine landings, the Borneo convoy work, and the Java Sea action. The damage of 27 February took her out of the final push on Java. She withdrew with dead aboard and her machinery wrecked, and she needed dockyard repair before she could fight again.