Ships
- IJN Murasame Captain from 15 December 1942
Youji Tanegashima (1907 – September 1977) was an officer of the Imperial Japanese Navy from Kagoshima Prefecture, a graduate of the Naval Academy at Etajima in the class of 1927 (the 55th class), and a lieutenant commander in the Second World War. He began as a gunnery and torpedo specialist in a battleship, destroyers and the submarine I-61, and commanded minesweepers and then, from October 1940, destroyers. As captain of the destroyer Shiokaze he escorted carriers and convoys from the Philippines and the Indian Ocean to the Aleutians. On 15 December 1942 he took over the destroyer Murasame in the Solomons. Within three months, on the night of 5–6 March 1943, American radar-directed gunfire and a torpedo sank her in the Kula Gulf; he was one of fifty-three survivors and reached Kolombangara after about twenty hours in the water. He was then given command of a transport unit and, in September and October 1943, directed the front line of the night evacuation by landing craft of some twelve thousand men from Kolombangara, an operation he later described in a book. He ended the war on Bougainville as a commander in charge of a guard unit, worked in shipping and newspapers in postwar Japan, and died in 1977.
He was born in 1907 in Kagoshima Prefecture, at the southern end of Kyushu. The sources examined here say nothing about his parents, his birthplace within the prefecture, or his boyhood.
He graduated from the Naval Academy in March 1927 as a member of the 55th class, at about twenty. The record of his career begins at sea, in the battleship Hiei and the destroyer Ashi. In 1930 he was gunnery officer of the submarine I-61; in 1933 he took the advanced course at the Naval Torpedo School; and in 1934 he returned to I-61 as navigator. On 15 October 1935, a lieutenant, he became torpedo officer of the destroyer Hakaze. On 31 March 1938, when the new destroyer Asagumo was completed, he was named her torpedo officer, and on 11 June of that year he was transferred to the staff of the Second Combined Air Group. On 10 December 1938 he went to the destroyer Asagiri as torpedo officer. In September 1939 he was attached to the Yokosuka Naval District, and on 20 October he received his first command, Minesweeper No. 12.
From 1 May 1940 he commanded Minesweeper No. 10, and on 15 October 1940 he was appointed captain of the destroyer Wakatake, lead ship of her class. Five days later, when the commanding officer of the destroyer Usugumo was sent to fit out a new ship, Tanegashima was made captain of both destroyers at once, and he held the double charge until 10 February 1941, when another officer took over the Usugumo. On 10 April 1941 he became captain of the destroyer Shiokaze. He went into the war with her.
Shiokaze and her sister Hokaze made up Destroyer Division 3, attached to Carrier Division 4 of the First Air Fleet. Tanegashima's ship escorted the light carrier Ryujo from Sasebo to Palau between 29 November and 5 December 1941. On 8 December she sailed from Palau for the attack on Legaspi in the Philippines, and on 17 December for the operations against Davao and the Jolo Islands. In January and February 1942 she worked out of Camranh Bay in Indochina, supporting air operations in the Kuching area of Borneo and the attack on Palembang in Sumatra. She sailed from Cape St. Jacques on 27 February for the Java operation, and on 2 March helped the destroyer Matsukaze sink the Dutch auxiliary minesweeper Endeh. On 20 March she left Singapore to support the attacks on Burma and the Andaman Islands, and then went with Ryujo on the Indian Ocean raid.
On 10 April 1942 she was reassigned to the Fifth Fleet, the northern force, and between 13 and 23 April she escorted the heavy cruiser Chokai from Singapore to Yokosuka. On 29 May she left Ominato for the attack on Attu in the Aleutians; in July she steamed from Kiska to Yokosuka. The first chapter of the book he wrote later deals with the Northern Force and the invasion of the Aleutians. In August she was assigned to a surface escort division, and from 21 August she escorted convoys between Japan and Formosa until he left her.
On 20 November 1942 he was attached to the Sasebo Naval District, and on 15 December he was appointed captain of the destroyer Murasame, relieving Commander Naoji Suenaga. Murasame was a Shiratsuyu-class destroyer, completed in January 1937, and she was flagship of Destroyer Division 2 under Captain Masao Tachibana. She had been in the Java Sea, with the escort at Midway and in the Eastern Solomons, had run troops to Guadalcanal in October and had taken part in the first Naval Battle of Guadalcanal in November. In January 1943 she and the destroyer Uranami escorted the carrier Chuyo from Truk to Yokosuka, and she was docked for repairs; in February she escorted Chuyo back to Truk, and on 28 February she steamed from Truk to Rabaul.
On 4 March 1943 she left Rabaul on a run to Vila, on Kolombangara, in company with the destroyer Minegumo, carrying drums of food and munitions. She called at Buin on the 5th and sailed again that afternoon. By the Japanese record she reached Vila by way of Blackett Strait in the evening, unloaded within the hour, and left at about half past ten, taking the shorter route home through the Kula Gulf. Ahead of her was an American force of three light cruisers, Montpelier, Cleveland and Denver, and three destroyers, Conway, Cony and Waller, under Rear Admiral Aaron Merrill, on its way to bombard Vila. The American radar picked up the Japanese ships first. At 11.09 by the Japanese record both destroyers opened fire; the radio on each was knocked out almost at once, and shells were hitting them continuously. Minegumo sank at about quarter past eleven. Murasame, the flagship, was carried north with fires spreading; by 11.16 they had reached all her boiler rooms and her engine room, and at 11.25 she could no longer be steered. At 11.30 the order to abandon ship was given, and she sank at 11.42. A hundred and twenty-eight men were lost, including the division's surgeon and her chief engineer. Fifty-three survived, among them Captain Tachibana, Tanegashima, the torpedo officer, the gunnery officer and the navigator, and they later reached Japanese lines on Kolombangara. A chapter of his own book is titled "Twenty Hours Adrift at Sea." Murasame was struck from the Navy List on 1 April.
He returned to Japan and on 25 March 1943 was attached to the Yokosuka Naval District. In late April he was appointed commander of the First Transport Unit. In the autumn that post took him back to the central Solomons. After the loss of New Georgia, some twelve thousand Japanese soldiers and sailors were left on Kolombangara, with American forces on the neighboring islands and the sea and air around them under American control. They were to be taken off, not by warship alone but chiefly in the standard army and navy landing craft, the Daihatsu barges, about a hundred of them, gathered from both services, moving only at night. Warships covered the barges, and the Japanese naval commander was Rear Admiral Matsuji Ijuin. The troops were carried first to Choiseul, some seventy kilometers off, and then to Bougainville, about a hundred and sixty kilometers farther on. The barges were lightly armed, mostly with machine guns, and slow, making about seven knots with eighty armed men aboard. Operation Se, as it was called, began on 25 September 1943; its two main evacuation phases are dated 26–28 September and 1–3 October. American destroyer groups were sent to blockade Kolombangara on successive nights, but the evacuation was carried out. The jacket of Tanegashima's book describes him as the lieutenant commander who directed the front line of the operation "from careful preparation to the completion of the withdrawal." The last chapter is titled for the battle off Vella Lavella, on the night of 6–7 October, when three American destroyers met nine Japanese destroyers covering the removal of the last 589 men from that island.
He was promoted commander and went to command the 88th Guard Unit. The war ended on Bougainville, and in March 1946 he was placed on the reserve list. In postwar Japan he was head of foreign relations at the Sasebo Jiji Shimbun, then from 1948 a branch manager for the Ueno Transport Company at Moji, Yokkaichi and Osaka, and from 1970 a managing director of the Toyofuku shipping company. He died in September 1977, aged about seventy.
His book, Solomon-kai "Se"-go sakusen: Kolombangara-tō kiseki no tesshū ("The Solomon Sea 'Se' Operation: The Miraculous Withdrawal from Kolombangara"), was published in 2003 in the Kojinsha NF Bunko series. Its chapters run through the Aleutians, the garrison at Tulagi, the "graveyard of destroyers," the twenty hours adrift, the First Raiding Transport Unit, the American landing on Rendova, New Georgia, Kolombangara, the formation of the barge force, the first and second evacuations, and Vella Lavella. The sources examined here do not describe his family or his life outside the service.