Ships
- IJN Amatsukaze Captain from 2 September 1944
Yoshizo Hasebe was a captain in the Imperial Japanese Navy. From 2 September 1944 he commanded the destroyer Amatsukaze, an extra duty laid on him while he remained special-duty captain of the fleet tanker Hayatomo. That oiler, completed in 1924, was by then a hulk based at Singapore.
Amatsukaze was a Kagerō-class destroyer with a hard early war already behind her. Under Tameichi Hara she fought in the Java Sea, at the Eastern Solomons and Santa Cruz, and in the Naval Battle of Guadalcanal. Masao Tanaka succeeded Hara in January 1943 and was still in command on 16 January 1944, when the American submarine Redfin torpedoed her north of the Spratly Islands. She was escorting a fast tanker convoy from Moji toward Singapore. The hit blew her in two and killed about eighty of her company, among them the division commander, Bunji Furukawa. Tanaka survived with the after half. The stern drifted for days, was taken in tow, and was brought to Cape St. Jacques for emergency work, then on to a long dockyard stay at Saigon.
Takanobu Sasaki, who was serving with the 11th Special Base Force, held Amatsukaze as additional duty through those repair months. Hasebe relieved him on 2 September 1944, with the ship still at Saigon. She came out of dry dock on 4 September, closed up enough to float, and still lacking a proper bow. In November she was patched once more and towed about 1,100 kilometers to Singapore by the auxiliary gunboat Eifuku Maru. The Philippines campaign had drawn away the ships that might have escorted that tow. At Singapore a temporary wave-cutter bow was fitted so the destroyer could be used for local escort work, and Hasebe remained her captain through that refit, his principal post still Hayatomo.
On 10 February 1945 he turned Amatsukaze over to Tomoyuki Morita, a lieutenant. Morita finished the remaining work, took her to sea on trials, and in March escorted a convoy out of Singapore bound toward Japan, the last sailing of that kind, as far as Yulin on Hainan. On 6 April 1945, off Amoy, American B-25 bombers attacked her. Her crew beached the ship, salvage was given up, and she was scuttled. Hasebe’s months in command had covered the passage from the Saigon yard to that reduced commission at Singapore.