Ships
- IJN Harusame Captain from 5 November 1943 · In command when she was lost, 8 June 1944
Toshihiko Tomita was an officer of the Imperial Japanese Navy and a graduate of the fifty-ninth class of the Naval Academy. He commanded the torpedo boat Hayabusa from September 1941, the destroyer Oite from October 1942 to October 1943, and the destroyer Harusame from November 1943. On 8 June 1944 Harusame was sunk by American Army aircraft during the second attempt to reinforce Biak, and he was among the survivors who were rescued.
Nothing is known of his birth, family, or schooling.
He was a member of the fifty-ninth class at Etajima. The Japanese list of captains of the torpedo boat Hayabusa has him, as a lieutenant, taking command on 10 September 1941. The movement record of Oite gives his class and says that he came to her from Hayabusa.
On 30 October 1942 he took command of Oite, a destroyer of the Fourth Fleet at Truk, relieving Lieutenant Commander Yoshio Yanase, who went to the destroyer Kawakaze. He was then a lieutenant, and on 1 November he was promoted lieutenant commander. In the middle of November he escorted a troop convoy from Palau to Rabaul and returned to Truk, where Oite went back to convoy escort in the Central Pacific. The division was broken up on 1 April 1943 and Oite reassigned to the 2nd Surface Escort Division. On 20 September 1943 she left Truk escorting a convoy for Japan. On 21 September, a dud torpedo, possibly fired by the submarine Haddock in an attack that damaged the transport Shin-Yūbari Maru, struck her without exploding, and she went on by way of Saipan to Yokosuka. In the first half of October she escorted a convoy from Yokosuka to Truk and then escorted the collier Asakaze Maru as it towed the torpedoed supply ship Mamiya back to Kure. He left her on 20 October 1943, relieved by Lieutenant (junior grade) Yasuhiro Uono. Oite was sunk at Truk on 18 February 1944 by an aerial torpedo.
In November 1943 he was appointed to Harusame. She had been under repair in Japan for months after being torpedoed by the submarine Wahoo near Wewak in January 1943, and on 30 November she was assigned to the 27th Destroyer Division with Shigure, Shiratsuyu, and Samidare. In January 1944 she escorted the transport Irako from Yokosuka to Truk, and from 19 January to 15 February she escorted tanker convoys from Truk to Tarakan and Balikpapan and back. On 17 February American carrier aircraft raided Truk and Harusame took near-misses and strafing, with two killed. She escorted the damaged Shigure to Palau and did patrol and escort work from there.
At the end of March she went from Palau to Davao. On 5–9 April she escorted the heavy cruisers Atago, Takao, Chōkai, Myōkō, and Haguro and the light cruiser Noshiro from Davao to Lingga. In mid-May she escorted the fleet from Lingga to Tawitawi. On 30–31 May the division escorted the 5th Cruiser Division from Tawitawi to Davao for the operation to reinforce Biak, where the Americans had landed on 27 May. On 2–4 June she covered a troop run to Biak that was aborted when the enemy found it, and went on to Sorong.
On 8 June 1944 she left Sorong at 3 a.m. as flagship of the 27th Destroyer Division in the covering group of a second run of six destroyers carrying army troops to Biak. At 12:20 p.m. American Army B-25 bombers and P-38 fighters attacked the force. Harusame took two direct bomb hits and sank about 30 miles northwest of the Cape of Good Hope near Manokwari. She went down at about 12:30 p.m. Seventy-four of her men were killed and eleven injured, among them the division commander, Captain Masashichi Shirahama. Ships of the force picked up the survivors, Tomita among them. The second run was turned back that night by an American cruiser force.
Harusame was struck from the navy list on 10 August 1944. The sources checked do not record Tomita's later service or whether he lived through the war.