Yasuhide Setoyama was a captain in the Imperial Japanese Navy. At the opening of the Pacific War he commanded Destroyer Division 29, and his flag was in Oite. He was not her captain. Lieutenant Commander Yoshio Yanase had the ship, while Setoyama and a small staff directed the division from her.
The division belonged to Destroyer Squadron 6 of the Fourth Fleet, the command responsible for Japan's outlying island garrisons. Its ships were four Kamikaze-class destroyers, Oite, Hayate, Asanagi, and Yunagi, completed in the 1920s and still used for escort and landing work. In early December 1941 they were at Kwajalein with the cruisers and transports gathered for the first landings of the war.
The division went out in two sections. The first section, Oite and Hayate, sailed with the force sent against Wake and was off the atoll on 11 December 1941. Hayate was sunk by the shore battery. Oite was near-missed. The landing broke up, the ships drew off, and the first attempt on Wake failed.
The second section, Asanagi and Yunagi, was at the Gilberts that morning. Those two destroyers then joined the second landing on Wake, which went ashore on 23 December. Carrier aircraft had beaten down the defense, and the island fell.
With Hayate gone, Setoyama kept the division on the South Seas advance. On 23 January 1942 its ships covered the capture of Rabaul. On 9 February they supported the landing at Gasmata, on the south coast of New Britain, and on 8 March they were with the force that put troops ashore at Lae and Salamaua. He left Destroyer Division 29 on 25 May 1942.