Japanese Destroyer Captain
by Tameichi Hara with Fred Saito and Roger Pineau
Ballantine Books, 1961, 311 pages
Tameichi Hara's wartime autobiography stands out as one of the best memoirs
ever written by a Japanese military leader. Hara was considered a national hero
during the war for his daring and successful exploits in 1942 and 1943 as a
destroyer captain. In the book Japanese Destroyer Captain, he vividly describes battles in which he participated and frankly evaluates both his and others'
decisions and actions.
When the Japanese Navy turned to suicide attacks in the latter stages of the
Pacific War, Hara played two key roles even though he personally taught his men
the importance of survival and considered suicide tactics to be inhuman
and intolerable. From May to December 1944 and also in the last few weeks of the
war, he served as commander of Kawatana Base near Sasebo City in Nagasaki
Prefecture. Kawatana was a training base for shin'yō explosive motorboats to be
launched from land bases to ram advancing enemy ships. In December 1944, Hara
became commander of the light cruiser Yahagi, which led nine ships that
escorted battleship Yamato on her final suicide sortie toward Okinawa. On
April 7, 1945, Yamato, Yahagi, and four of eight escorting
destroyers were sunk by American air attacks. Hara survived the sinking of his
ship and returned to Kawatana to continue his training duties.
The many details in this book reflect Hara's thorough research, which
included interviews, naval records, and personal statements submitted to him.
The Foreword explains that the book attempts to objectively and comprehensively
portray the Japanese side during WWII. Japanese Destroyer Captain was originally
published in Japanese in 1958, and journalist Fred Saito interviewed Hara more
than 800 hours as part of translating and expanding the original book. Roger
Pineau, coauthor of the Kamikaze Corps history The Divine Wind (1958),
also coauthored this book and assisted by verifying the accuracy of battle
accounts. The resulting English book first published in 1961 turned out to be
first-rate storytelling with great care taken in regards to historical facts and
translation.
The heart of Hara's memoirs covers the battles he participated in as a
destroyer captain in 1942 and 1943 with about two thirds of the book dealing
with these two years. The book has five parts in chronological order starting
with his upbringing in Kagawa Prefecture in a former samurai family and ending
with the sinking of battleship Yamato. After graduation from Etajima
Naval Academy in 1921, he had several assignments as destroyer chief torpedo
officer. For three years he secretly tackled a private project to prove the
faults of existing Japanese torpedo doctrine and to develop a new manual. When
published in 1932, his results were quickly accepted and led to marked
improvement in torpedo marksmanship. He was given command of his first destroyer
in November 1934 and commanded several destroyers through December 1943, when he
got assigned to the Naval Torpedo School at Oppama near Yokosuka and then later
to the torpedo boat school at Kawatana. His final ship assignment was
to the light cruiser Yahagi, which sunk along with battleship Yamato
on their suicide mission toward Okinawa.
Since the beginning of the Pacific War, Hara commanded a destroyer in many
sorties (over 100 according to his count) and came back victorious. He commanded
the destroyer Amatsukaze from October 1940 to January 1943 and
participated in several battles including the Battle of Java Sea, the Battle of
the Eastern Solomons, and the Battle of the Santa Cruz Islands. During the Naval
Battle of Guadalcanal in November 1942, Amatsukaze suffered severe damage
with more than 30 large holes and with countless holes from machine-gun bullets
that killed 43 crewmembers, but the ship succeeded in sinking the American
destroyer USS Barton (DD-599) with torpedoes. After returning to Japan
and getting assigned to Yokosuka Naval Station, he fell ill and took several
weeks to recover before his next assignment. Shigure, the flagship of the
destroyer squadron he commanded from March to December 1943, became the Navy's
most famous destroyer with much publicity surrounding battle successes in the
Solomon Islands without losing a single crewman despite the loss of other
Japanese warships. Hara earned the nickname of "Miracle Captain" as
Shigure survived even though about 30 other destroyers of the Tokyo Express
were sunk as they tried to provide supplies and reinforcements to the Japanese forces
fighting in the Solomon Islands and New Guinea.
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2007 hardcover edition
published by
Naval Institute Press
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The strong personality and independent beliefs of Captain Tameichi Hara show
from an early age to the end of the book when battleship Yamato sinks
signaling a symbolic end to the Japanese Navy. He abhorred the physical
discipline inflicted upon students at Etajima Naval Academy, which he attended
from 1918 to 1921. Later in his career, he completely banned physical beatings
when he ran across a new gunnery officer who gave blow after blow with his fist
to a crewman who failed to salute even though this was the same crewman who was
an expert spotter that previously had been the first to recognize an enemy
submarine. Hara again and again demonstrated attitudes and opinions that
differed from certain superiors and leaders, but he somehow managed to keep
getting promoted in the Japanese naval hierarchy. Probably his most rash action
took place while serving as commander at the training base in Kawatana, when he
went in July 1944 to the Naval Ministry in Tokyo and delivered a written
petition to Rear Admiral Prince Takamatsu, younger brother of Emperor Hirohito.
Hara wrote that Japan had already lost the war, and he urged the Emperor to end
the war and as a first step to dismiss incompetent admirals and generals
unfamiliar with modern warfare. He never heard what happened to his petition,
but most likely Prince Takamatsu never showed it to anyone in the Naval Ministry
since Hara would have been dealt with severely if any admirals there had found
out.
Although Hara and other ship captains argued against the suicide mission of
battleship Yamato and her escorts toward Okinawa, the group of officers
being briefed on the mission accepted the order when Vice Admiral Seiichi Ito
explained, "I think we are being given an appropriate chance to die. A samurai
lives so that he is always prepared to die" (p. 278). Captain Hara briefed his
crew on the light cruiser Yahagi about the special attack (tokkō
in Japanese) mission with the following message (p. 284):
As you know, hundreds of our comrades have flown bomb-laden planes on
one-way missions against the enemy. Thousands more of these flyers are
standing by at every airfield. Hundreds of our comrades are ready in
submarines to man one-way torpedoes. Thousands of others will drive
explosive torpedo boats or crawl the bottom of the sea to fasten explosive
charges against enemy ships.
Our job in this mission is part of the same pattern. Our mission appears
suicidal and it is. But I wish to emphasize that suicide is not the
objective. The objective is victory.
You are not sheep whipped to a sacrificial altar. We are lions released
in the arena, to devour the enemy gladiators. You are not to be slain merely
as sacrifices for the nation.
Do not hesitate to come back alive. We must force our way against any
enemy effort to intercept our mission. But you must not give up your lives
cheaply. Once this ship is crippled or sunk, do not hesitate to save
yourselves for the next fight. There will be other battles. You are not to
commit suicide. You are to beat the enemy!
Yahagi sunk from American bombs and torpedoes about 15 minutes prior
to Yamato going under. Hara grieved at the loss of the two warships as he
clung to a piece of wood in the oil-covered water, but one of the surviving
destroyers rescued him and returned to Sasebo.
Hara's critical assessment of Japanese Navy's leaders and strategy and his
detailed description of his role in many naval battles make his memoirs an
extremely valuable historical document. Some of Hara's comments, such as the
speech he made to Yahagi's crew prior to
departing on the suicide mission with battleship Yamato, most likely were
heavily edited, since it is unlikely that Hara would remember the exact words
more than ten years after the end of the war. His comments about Japanese suicide
attacks such as Yamato and shin'yō motorboats make clear than not all
military leaders favored these tactics, but his remarks also show that nobody
had enough influence to stop Japan's military leaders from making suicide
attacks the central military strategy from October 1944 until the end of the
war. |
