Sazanami was a Fubuki, a Special Type destroyer, built at Maizuru. She was launched on 6 June 1931 and commissioned on 19 May 1932. The name is the ripples. She went to Destroyer Division 7 with Ushio and Akebono, and those two ships are the thread through her war. Ushio was beside her at the start. Akebono was beside her at the end.
On 7 December 1941 she and Ushio were the ships sent to shell Midway while the carriers were at Pearl Harbor. Sazanami fired 193 rounds. Four men were killed on Sand Island, and the installations there were hit. Then the two destroyers went home. It was a small bombardment. It was also the first morning.
In February she was in the Dutch East Indies with the invasion forces. On 27 February she was in the Java Sea action. She is not credited with a ship there. The boat that is tied to her name came two days later, and the tie is easy to get wrong. On the night of 1 March the destroyers Amatsukaze and Hatsukaze found the submarine Perch on the surface, north of Surabaya, and depth-charged her until she could not stay down. They did not sink her. On the morning of 3 March, Perch could not dive. Ushio and Sazanami came up. Ushio opened fire. Perch's own crew scuttled her. All 59 men got off, and Ushio took them aboard. Six of them died later as prisoners. The loss is not credited to Sazanami. She was there.
At the end of April she took the light carrier Shoho down to Truk. On 7 May 1942 she was the destroyer with that carrier in the Coral Sea, in company with Goto's cruisers. Aircraft from Yorktown and Lexington overwhelmed Shoho. She sank in minutes, the first Japanese carrier lost in the war, and the sinking is not credited to one ship. The cruisers cleared out. Sazanami was sent back for the men in the water. Captain Izawa got off, and a few hundred of the crew with him. The number is not settled. The carrier's loss is usually given as 203 saved. The destroyer's own record says 255. Most of Shoho's people did not come up the side. Sazanami was not hit. A Yorktown pilot thought he had sunk a cruiser in that attack. It was her, and she was whole.
In June she was with Admiral Kakuta's carriers when they struck Dutch Harbor, the Aleutian side of Midway, not the carrier fight itself. In August she escorted Yamato and the carrier Taiyo during the Eastern Solomons and was not in the air battle. In September she was on the Guadalcanal run with Ushio, towing barges of food and ammunition into Kamimbo, and once she made that trip with Amagiri. Then she went back to the carrier escorts, which is where Division 7 spent most of the next year.
On 18 August 1943 she was useful again in a night action. Rear Admiral Matsuji Ijuin flew his flag in her. With Hamakaze, Isokaze, and Shigure she was covering barges into Horaniu, on Vella Lavella, to set up a staging base. Four American destroyers met them: Nicholas, O'Bannon, Taylor, and Chevalier. Torpedoes from both sides missed. Gunfire slightly damaged Hamakaze and put one 5-inch shell into Isokaze. Nothing hit Sazanami. Most of the barges still landed their troops.
On 4 December 1943 she was escorting the carrier Chuyo when the submarine Sailfish sank her, east of Japan. The carrier went down in about six minutes and took most of the people aboard with her, including twenty American prisoners from the submarine Sculpin. Urakaze picked up the larger number of survivors, and the one Sculpin prisoner who lived. Sazanami picked up 30.
The captain by then was Lieutenant Commander Suga Akiji. He had had her since July 1942. On 10 January 1944 a relief was ordered, Lieutenant Commander Hashimoto, and it never took effect. On 12 January Sazanami and Akebono left Rabaul to meet a tanker convoy coming up from Palau toward Truk. On 14 January, about 300 miles southeast of Yap, near 05°15′N, 141°15′E, the submarine Albacore hit her with two torpedoes. She broke up and was gone in under three minutes. One hundred fifty-three men died, Suga among them. Akebono took off the other 89. She was struck from the Navy List on 10 March 1944.