This is a review of the book “A Glorious Way to Die: The Kamikaze Mission of the Battleship Yamato, April 1945.” (1981) by Russell Spurr.
In early April 1945, the Japanese Imperial Navy launched its final large-scale surface operation of the Second World War, code-named ‘Operation Heaven No.1’. A flotilla of warships, formerly known as the 2nd Fleet but now re-dubbed the ‘First Special Attack Force’ left the Inland Sea at Kure and headed towards the Island of Okinawa, currently besieged by a massive US amphibious invasion force.
The fleet’s mission was to engage the landing ships of the US fleet, hopefully destroying or driving off enough of them to force the Americans to abort the invasion. The force numbered ten ships- including the 2nd Destroyer Squadron which comprised the light cruiser Yahagi and eight destroyers- and the world’s largest battleship and the pride of the Combined Fleet- the Yamato. The sortie was a one-way trip, the Yamato and Yahagi only carried enough fuel and oil to reach Okinawa but not enough to return to Kure. Provided she survived encounters with US aircraft and warships, the Yamato had been ordered to beach herself on Okinawa’s shoreline and continue to use her guns until she ran out of ammunition and her crew were to disembark and join the island’s garrison.
The Special Attack Force never even got near Okinawa. In the early afternoon of April 7, hundreds of US carrier planes attacked the ships in waves, sinking the Yamato, the Yahagi and four of the eight destroyers in under two hours. Of the Yamato’s crew of 3,332 men, only 269 survived. Another 1,187 men perished on the other ships that were sunk or damaged, giving a total death toll of 4,250 men, a larger toll than the Battles of Midway & Coral Sea combined. Only four destroyers survived to limp back into their harbour at Kure, one of them missing its bow section and steaming backwards by the stern, all of them badly damaged and loaded with survivors from the lost ships. The US Navy lost 12 men killed or missing and 10 planes shot down or ditched plus eight more written off due to severe damage.
Spurr, a British journalist and a veteran of WW2, gives us a highly readable and very human narrative-style account of the Yamato’s final mission. The majority of the book is based on accounts and recollections of Japanese survivors but he also includes the perspective of US sailors and airmen.
The most striking thing about the book is the reactions of the Imperial Navy’s senior staff when they received the order to launch the operation. Neither the commander of the Special Attack Force, Vice-Admiral Seiichi Ito, nor any of the other senior officers that sailed with the fleet, had any enthusiasm for the mission. When the Imperial Navy’s Chief of Staff, Admiral Kusaka (who privately opposed the mission himself) gave the order to Ito and his subordinates at a briefing, the reactions ranged from stunned disbelief to angry protest. The latter response came most strongly from Rear-Admiral Kaizo Komura, commander of the 2nd Destroyer Squadron who risked court-martial to openly oppose the mission, labelling the plan as ‘insane’. Although depicted by some historians as self-deluded fanatics, most of the senior officers in the navy were all too aware of the hopeless odds against them and the utter foolhardiness of the plan. Even the commander of the army garrison on Okinawa, Lt-General Mitsura Ushijima, was appalled when informed of the operation, saying ‘Banzai charges should be best left to soldiers!’
If any single individual in the high command of the Imperial Navy could be held to take the most responsibility for the operation, it would be Captain Shigamori Kami, Chief of Operations of the Imperial Navy. Kami displayed the most enthusiasm for the plan and his forceful personality, combined with a heartfelt speech he gave at the meeting, extolling the heroism of past admirals like Togo and Yamamoto, overwhelmed the reluctance of Admiral Toyoda, C-in-C of the Combined Fleet. Toyoda had deep misgivings about the whole plan, but he had an unsteady personality and, like Admiral Nagumo at Midway, a tendency to over-rely on advice from subordinates. Intimidated by the upstart Kami, he authorised the mission to proceed. With the exception of Komura, the ship commanders decided that honour and duty came first and they meekly accepted their fate.
The initial pressure for the operation appears to have come from the Imperial Army (who had been angrily demanding help from the Navy for weeks in the defense of Okinawa), the War Cabinet and Emperor Hirohito himself who, when told of the US attack on Okinawa, uttered ‘But where is our Navy?’ Many cooler heads in the Navy tried to stop the operation, arguing that the Yamato and her escorts would be of much better use as night raiders. But others in the Naval high command were more fatalistic, simply arguing that since it was likely that the remains of the navy would likely become mere floating targets in the Inland Sea for US air attacks, it would be more dignified for the Yamato to end her days in a pitched battle on the open sea.
There was an uncomfortable unawareness among the Navy that the Yamato, despite the enormous expense of her construction and the lavish prestige bestowed upon her, had been something of a white elephant during the war. She had seen relatively little action and her performance in the Battle of Leyte the previous October had been less than impressive, the giant ship being virtually driven off by a torpedo attack from a tiny US destroyer-escort, like a lion recoiling from a mouse. It is an irony that although the Japanese demonstrated the potential of the aircraft carrier more than any other nation at the beginning of the Pacific War, they continued to lavish huge resources on the battleship as a weapon. Even Yamamoto regarded the battleship as the queen of the seas and, like many in the naval high command, he stubbornly clung to the doctrine that yearned for the ‘decisive battle’ on the open sea- one mighty engagement like Tsushima or Jutland that would decide the entire war. As historian H P Willmott wrote, the Yamato was a ‘giant religious scroll’, built as an article of faith rather than out of any military good sense.
Spurr’s book tells the story of the final sortie of the Yamato and gives a good portrait on life aboard an Imperial Navy warship. If their commanders were reluctant about the mission, it did not filter down to the lower ranks. Morale remained high among the bulk of the crew as the huge battleship and her escorts departed the Inland Sea on the morning of April 6. The atmosphere on board the Yamato the night before her final battle was calm and relaxed. One of the most popular books among the crew was Tolstoy’s War & Peace and Ensign Sakei Katono, who survived the sinking, spent the evening reading a copy that had passed through many other hands. Another survivor the author interviewed was Ensign Shigeo Yamada on board the cruiser Yahagi who was a Nisei, a second generation migrant born to Japanese parents in the United States. Although a US citizen, Yamada had, at his father’s insistence, studied at a Japanese university and was residing there when the Pacific War had begun. Given a choice between imprisonment as an enemy alien or enlisting in the armed forces, Yamada chose the latter, despite the prejudice he knew he would suffer.
The book includes a vivid account of the attack on the Strike Force itself. The horrific effects of the massed firepower the US pilots brought to bear on the Yamato and her escorts is grimly described. One survivor recounted how the Yamato’s bath-house pool was used as a location to throw the bodies of slain crew, the pool filling up with scores of corpses floating in the reddening still-warm water. The telephone system on board Yamato failed early in the attack, preventing the co-ordination of fire-fighting and damage-control parties. US pilots recounted how the anti-aircraft fire, although dense and spectacular, was highly in-accurate and poorly directed. Nonetheless, many fliers owed their lives to the rugged construction of the carrier planes, as many returned to their ships peppered with holes. Even as the ships sank, many would-be survivors perished in the water, their lungs clogged with oil or succumbing to strafing runs by US fighters.
The book concludes with the survivors arriving back in Kure. When informed of the loss of the Yamato, Toyoda bitterly remarked, 'I wish I had sent Kami with them'. Rear Admiral Komura survived and arrived at the docks to find Kusaka waiting for him. Komura walked past his superior without even acknowledging him. Another survivor, Ensign Mitsuru Yoshida, limped up the hill to the naval hospital along with a crowd of other wounded survivors. He passed a group of young school-girls drilling with bamboo sticks and the youngsters paused to bow respectfully as the injured sailors filed past. Yoshida wept. ‘These girls had faith in the navy. Now I felt the navy had failed them.’
