pre-war Japanese navy struggled with stability.

[Squidly-Diddly]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_torpedo_boat_Tomozuru

Treaty limits pushed designers to put big guns on small ships.

[Guillermo]

Most interesting, thanks.
I have found this of particular interest too:

Sequel
From October 23 to 26 in 1944, the Japanese Navy was soundly defeated by the U.S in the battle of the Philippine Sea. After the battle, the U.S. 3rd fleet under the control of Admiral Halsey was assigned to attack Leyte Island. The 3rd fleet appeared east of the Philippines and attacked Luzon Airfield after two weeks resting in Ulithi on December 13. Task Group 38 carried out the attack under the control of Vice Admiral McCain.
On December 17, Task Group 38 withdrew to the east to refuel. However, the weather worsened, and they had to suspend the refueling operations soon after the noon. On the morning of December 18, a small but strong typhoon, which weather watcher could not find struck Task Group 38. Radars were blown off, and the commanders were unable to control the vessels or contact with each other with their radios. The wind velocity exceeded 55 m/s. The captains of Destroyers Hull, Monaghan and Spence needed to keep their fuel tanks empty in order to fill them with fuel, and so they did not lower the COG of their vessels by pumping seawater into the tanks. The three unstable destroyers repeated inclined about 70 degrees when the storm was the strongest, and finally all three vessels sank. Some other vessels, including five light air careers, three escort air careers, two heavy cruisers, and eight destroyers, were seriously damaged, and nine vessels were slightly damaged. The number of aircraft that were thrown into the sea or that crashed into each other and burned amounted to no less than 183. About 800 sailors died. Task Group 38 was heavily damaged not by the Japanese Navy, but by a natural disaster.
Perhaps this incident might be caused by lack of their stability even the situation of typhoon and empty fuel tanks was so unfortunate. Of course, the cause of Tomozuru's capsiz is the top secret of the Japanese Navy at the time, and the U.S. Navy could not have known it. In contrast, almost no Japanese vessels capsized since Tomozuru did. In military field, knowledge of failure cases cannot be shared between nations.

http://shippai.jst.go.jp/en/Detail?fn=0&id=CB1011021&

Cheers.

[jehardiman]

FWIW, all DD's and DE's of that time frame were top heavy and grew less stable over time as armaments and sensors were upgraded during the war, the Japanese more so than others due to the weight of their torpedo mounts. The 3 US DD's lost in the '44 Typhoon (USS Hull, USS Spence, and USS Monaghan) was due to the CO's decision not to flood down fuel oil/ballast tanks as required by the stability books. The "Lessons Learned" letter from Nimitz afterward is insightful to this very day and I often quote from it when lecturing about R&D tasking and Command Decision (http://www.history.navy.mil/faqs/faq102-4b.htm).

7. Various weaknesses were brought to light in our forecasting and dissemination of weather information, in structural details which permitted flooding with consequent loss of power, short circuiting, etc., and in the stability of some of our destroyers. Measures to correct these faults are being taken as far as possible. Yet the Commander in Chief, Pacific Fleet wishes to emphasize that to insure safety at sea, the best that science can devise and that naval organization can provide must be regarded only as an aid, and never as a substitute for the good seamanship, self- reliance, and sense of ultimate responsibility which are the first requisites in a seaman and naval officer.

[Squidly-Diddly]

and opening up big holes after the roll.

Is a top heavy ship hard to 'feel' before the event, as in a lack of scary warning signs?