Qualla: Japanese destroyer Arashi

Japanese destroyer Arashi: Introduction

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Shizuo Fukui, Public domain. On the morning of 4 June 1942, the Japanese destroyer Arashi was alone in the wrong place for the wrong reasons. Her captain had been chasing an American submarine. The submarine had escaped into the deep. Arashi now had to race north at flank speed to catch up with Admiral Nagumo's carrier fleet before it disappeared over the horizon. She cut a white arrow across the Pacific. Twenty thousand feet above, Lieutenant Commander Wade McClusky of USS Enterprise was flying a fuel-critical search pattern with thirty-one Dauntless dive bombers, running out of sky, about to turn back. Then he saw the wake. It pointed exactly where he needed to go. Within ninety minutes, three of Japan's four fleet carriers at Midway were burning wrecks. Arashi, unaware that her hurry had just won the battle of the Pacific for the other side, rejoined the fleet and watched it die.

Image: Shizuo Fukui | Public domain

Japanese destroyer Arashi: A Kagero-Class Destroyer

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Shizuo Fukui, Public domain. Arashi was a Kagero-class destroyer, commissioned in 1941 - part of the backbone fleet the Imperial Japanese Navy had built to contest control of the central Pacific. She was 118.5 meters long, could reach 35 knots, and carried a crew of 240 officers and enlisted men. Her main ba...

Image: Shizuo Fukui | Public domain

Japanese destroyer Arashi: The Wake That Lost an Empire

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Shizuo Fukui, Public domain. The details of that morning have been picked over by historians for decades. At about 09:55 on 4 June, Arashi was still on the edge of the Japanese formation, having broken off a prolonged attempt to depth-charge the submarine USS Nautilus. She now poured on speed to rejoin Nagum...

Image: Shizuo Fukui | Public domain

Japanese destroyer Arashi: The Killing of Ensign Osmus

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Shizuo Fukui, Public domain. The Midway story has another chapter, a darker one. Arashi's crew pulled an American airman from the water that same day: Ensign Wesley Osmus, a torpedo bomber pilot from VT-3 off USS Yorktown. Osmus was the last plane in his formation's attack and was shot down early in the appr...

Image: Shizuo Fukui | Public domain

Japanese destroyer Arashi: A Year of Running

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Shizuo Fukui, Public domain. The fourteen months that followed Midway turned Arashi into a workhorse. She escorted the carrier Zuiho to Wake Island, patrolled the Aleutians, shuttled between Truk and Rabaul, and ran troop transports into Milne Bay and Guadalcanal. In December 1942, when her consort destroyer...

Image: Shizuo Fukui | Public domain

Japanese destroyer Arashi: The Night in Vella Gulf

Thu, 16 Apr 2026 00:00:00 GMT

Photo credit Shizuo Fukui, Public domain. Four days later, Arashi was back on the same transport route, this time with Hagikaze, Kawakaze, and Shigure under Captain Sugiura. Weather had closed in over Vella Gulf. Visibility was down to about 200 yards. What the Japanese did not know was that three American destroyers - D...

Image: Shizuo Fukui | Public domain