Her rigging consists of her real-life bridge, funnel, and mast (with radar) worn in a backpack-like arrangement, her three 15.2 cm twin gun mounts controlled by joysticks, an 8 cm twin anti-aircraft gun mount on her right ankle, and a flight deck and 61 cm quad torpedo tubes on her left leg.
Sakawa is visibly shorter, thinner and has small breasts: the result of having never participated in combat because the IJN was short of fuel (in fact, this was what prevented her and the other surviving Akizuki-class destroyers under her DesRon from joining her sister Yahagi in Operation Ten-Go).
Due to her being commissioned late in the war and her inability to participate in Operation Ten-Gou, her only claim to fame is being used as a target for Operation Crossroads at Bikini Atoll in 1946 with several other ships, being sunk in the first Able detonation.