The name means stream wind. Sawakaze was a Minekaze-class destroyer. Mitsubishi at Nagasaki laid her down on 7 January 1918, launched her on 7 January 1919 and completed her on 6 March 1920. She served in Destroyer Division 2 with Minekaze, Okikaze and Yakaze. The division escorted the carrier Akagi for aircrew rescue from 1930 to 1932 and patrolled the Yangtze during the First Shanghai Incident.
From 1935 to December 1938 she was a search and rescue craft at the Tateyama naval air base. She was due to retire at the end of 1938, but the Sino-Japanese War kept her on active service. She was still at Tateyama at Pearl Harbor. From March 1942 she patrolled the entrance of Tokyo Bay against submarines for the rest of the war, with only an occasional convoy run to Muroran or Kobe.
From December 1944 she was a training ship for the Yokosuka Anti-Submarine Warfare School. From May 1945 she was a target vessel for flights of the 1st Tokko Air Corps. She was at Yokosuka at the surrender, was removed from the Navy List on 15 September 1945, and was broken up in 1947.
Sources: Wikipedia, Japanese destroyer Sawakaze, rewritten here.