Ships
- IJN Yugiri Division flag, not her captain, from the start of the war · Killed aboard her, 28 August 1942
Yuji Yamada entered the Imperial Japanese Navy in the 46th class at Etajima. The class finished the academy course on 21 November 1918, with 124 graduates. He came from Fukuoka. By the Pacific War he was a captain.
On 11 August 1941 he took command of Destroyer Division 20. From the start of the war his flag was in Yugiri. Yamada was not her captain. Commander Masayoshi Motokura had the ship. The division was a group of Fubuki-class destroyers, Yugiri, Asagiri, Amagiri, and Sagiri, working under Destroyer Squadron 3.
The division went south with the Malaya invasion force. Yugiri left Kure on 20 November 1941 and was at Samah, on Hainan, by 26 November, with Yamada's flag aboard. Through January 1942 the ships screened troop convoys out of Samah and Cam Ranh Bay, then stayed on that work through the Singapore operations, the landings on Sumatra, and the move against the Andaman Islands. On 19 December Yugiri shared in the sinking of the Dutch submarine O 20 with Uranami and Ayanami. On 27 January, off Endau, she was among the ships that sank the British destroyer Thanet, in company with Fubuki, Shirayuki, Asagiri, and the light cruiser Sendai. Sagiri was lost late in December 1941. Shirakumo joined the division on 10 March 1942.
In early April 1942 the division took part in the sweep into the Bay of Bengal. It then came home through Singapore and Cam Ranh Bay and reached the Kure navy yard on 22 April for maintenance. Late in May it sailed to screen Vice Admiral Shiro Takasu's battleship force, placed between Midway and the Aleutians for the Midway operation. That force never met the American carriers. In July the ships moved from Amami-Oshima toward Mergui for a second raid into the Indian Ocean. Guadalcanal cancelled the raid, and Yugiri was sent on to Truk, arriving late in August.
After the Battle of the Eastern Solomons on 24 August, Yugiri took troops from transports at sea and headed for Guadalcanal with the division. On 28 August 1942, about sixty miles north-northeast of Savo, Marine dive bombers from Henderson Field attacked. A bomb hit Yugiri near the bridge. Yamada was killed aboard her. Thirty-two men died in that hit, and forty were injured. He died as commander of Destroyer Division 20, and he was not her captain. Commander Masayoshi Motokura still had the ship. In the same attack Asagiri sank and Shirakumo was left unable to steam. Yugiri stayed afloat, reached the Shortland anchorage on 30 August, and later underwent repairs at Kure that lasted to the end of 1942. Destroyer Division 20, which he had commanded since 11 August 1941, was disbanded on 1 October 1942.