Ships
- IJN Oite Captain at the Wake Island attack, December 1941 · Relieved on 30 October 1942
- IJN Kawakaze Captain from 28 November 1942
Yoshio Yanase was an officer of the Imperial Japanese Navy and a graduate of the fifty-fifth class of the Naval Academy. He commanded the torpedo boat Sagi from March 1939, the destroyer Oite from April 1941 to October 1942, and the destroyer Kawakaze from 28 November 1942. He was killed on 6 August 1943 when Kawakaze was sunk at the Battle of Vella Gulf, and he was promoted commander on the day of his death.
Nothing is known of his birth, family, or schooling.
He belonged to the fifty-fifth class at Etajima. The Japanese list of captains of the torpedo boat Sagi has him, as a lieutenant, taking her on 6 March 1939 and leaving her on 15 October 1940. On 15 April 1941, as a lieutenant commander, he was appointed to command the destroyer Oite.
Oite was the flagship of the 29th Destroyer Division in the Fourth Fleet, with Captain Yasuhide Setoyama in command of the division. At the end of November 1941 the division went from Truk to Kwajalein, and from there Oite went on 8–11 December 1941 with the first Wake Island invasion force, carrying part of the naval landing party. She was lightly damaged by near misses from the American coastal batteries, and fourteen of her men were injured. On 23 December she went again with the second invasion force. In January 1942 she was with the force that took Rabaul, in February with the Gasmata landing, and in March with the landings at Lae and Salamaua. On 10 March American carrier aircraft struck the ships at Lae and Salamaua and, according to the Japanese article on her, damaged all three ships of her division, Oite among them. At the end of March she went to Sasebo for repair, and she was back at Truk at the end of April. On 7–8 May she escorted the Port Moresby convoy during the Battle of the Coral Sea. From the end of June to the middle of July she escorted a convoy carrying airfield construction crews from Truk by way of Bougainville to Guadalcanal. In August she made a reconnaissance and bombardment mission to Guadalcanal on the 12th and a troop run on the 16th, and at the end of the month went with the occupation force for Ocean and Nauru islands. In September she escorted convoys from Truk by way of Rabaul to Palau. He left her on 30 October 1942 and was succeeded by Lieutenant Toshihiko Tomita.
On 28 November 1942 he took over Kawakaze, which had just arrived at the Shortlands from Rabaul. Two days later, on 30 November, she went on a supply-drum run to Guadalcanal and fought in the Battle of Tassafaronga, in which the destroyers of the Second Destroyer Squadron under Rear Admiral Raizō Tanaka engaged an American cruiser and destroyer force. The Japanese article says that her torpedoes helped to defeat the American force, and the movement record says that she may have hit the cruiser Pensacola. She made more drum runs on 3 December and on 7 December, when attack by American motor torpedo boats aborted it, and she covered the run on 11 December, when she helped the destroyer Suzukaze sink PT-44. On 19–23 December she and the destroyer Ariake escorted the transport Kōzan Maru with 1,300 troops from Rabaul by way of the Shortlands to Munda. In January she covered another supply-drum run in the first days of the month, and on the 10th she made another and escorted the damaged Hatsukaze back to the Shortlands. On 16–23 January she escorted a troop convoy to Kolombangara and back, and on 27–28 January she made a troop run to the Russell Islands. In the evacuation of Guadalcanal she covered the runs on 1 and 4 February, and on 4 February she took Rear Admiral Sentarō Hashimoto, commander of the Third Destroyer Squadron, off the temporarily disabled destroyer Shirayuki. The movement record credits her with sinking PT-111 on 1 February.
On 9–10 February, after leaving the Shortlands with a convoy, she collided with the cargo ship Tōun Maru and was heavily damaged. The destroyer Kuroshio towed or assisted her to Rabaul on 11–13 February, where she was given emergency repairs. In March she escorted a convoy from Rabaul to Truk, and then escorted the cruiser Katori from Truk to Yokosuka and went on to Sasebo for repair. She left Sasebo at the end of May with a convoy for Truk. In June she made a transport run from Truk by way of Ponape to Nauru and back, accompanied the cruiser Jintsū on an aircrew transport run to Kwajalein, and on 30 June clipped a reef at Truk and turned back for repairs. On 1 August she made a transport run from Rabaul to Tuluvu.
On 6 August 1943 she sailed with the destroyers Hagikaze and Arashi to carry about 940 troops and 90 tons of supplies to Kolombangara, with Shigure as the covering ship, under Captain Kaju Sugiura of the 4th Destroyer Division. At 9:30 p.m., in Vella Gulf between Kolombangara and Vella Lavella, American destroyers that had located the Japanese column by radar fired 24 torpedoes. The ships were in line in the order Hagikaze, Arashi, Kawakaze, Shigure, and three of the four were hit at once. Only Shigure, which was about a thousand meters behind Kawakaze, avoided the torpedoes. Kawakaze then took gunfire and torpedoes and sank almost at once, and 169 of her crew were killed, Yanase among them. About forty of her men survived. Of the 940 troops in the three ships, 820 are said to have been killed. The movement record puts the position of the sinking at 7°50' S, 156°54' E.
He was promoted commander on the day of his death. Kawakaze was struck from the navy list on 15 October 1943.