Ships
- IJN Hagikaze Captain from 31 March 1941
Commander Yoshio Inoue of the Imperial Japanese Navy took command of the destroyer Hagikaze on 31 March 1941. That was the day the ship entered commissioned service, and Inoue was the officer who brought her into the fleet as her captain.
Hagikaze was a fleet destroyer of the Kagerō class, one of the newest destroyers in the Imperial Navy when he assumed command. Ships of the class were built for high speed and long range. They mounted 5-inch guns and a heavy battery of torpedo tubes, and they were intended to screen carriers, escort invasion forces, and attack with torpedoes in night actions.
A destroyer fresh from the builders still had to become a working ship. Through the months after 31 March 1941, Inoue had charge of Hagikaze while her officers and crew learned station-keeping, gunnery, and torpedo drill and settled into the routines of a squadron. Command at that rank meant responsibility for navigation, engineering, and shiphandling, and for a crew expected to fight at close range, often in darkness.
By the time Japan entered the Pacific War in December 1941, Hagikaze was an active unit of the destroyer force. Destroyers of her class spent long periods at sea in the first year of the war, screening heavier ships and moving with the fleets that operated across the central and southern Pacific. Inoue's command of Hagikaze dates from 31 March 1941, at the start of her passage from peacetime commission into wartime service.
Hagikaze went on to serve through the fighting in the Solomon Islands. On the night of 6–7 August 1943, while carrying troops toward Kolombangara, she was sunk in the Battle of Vella Gulf in a night action with American destroyers. Inoue's place with the ship is the opening of that career: the commander who took Hagikaze into service on 31 March 1941 and captained her from that date.