Requiem for Battleship Yamato
by Yoshida Mitsuru
translated by Richard H. Minear
University of Washington Press, 1985 (hardcover)
Naval Institute Press, 1999 (paperback)
152 pages
The sinking of Yamato, the largest battleship ever
built, meant the end of the surface fleet for the Imperial Japanese Navy and
the disappearance of one of Japan's most recognized symbols of military might. Yamato,
the light cruiser Yahagi, and eight escort destroyers formed the task
force sent on a desperate suicide mission to Okinawa to assist in defense of
the island. On April 7, 1945, American planes dropped bombs and launched
torpedoes that destroyed Yamato less than halfway from mainland Japan to
Okinawa. Over four thousand Japanese officers and men in the task force perished
in the attacks, and only four damaged destroyers made their way back to Japan
with survivors, including 269 Yamato men rescued from the water (Spurr
1981, 308). In Requiem for Battleship Yamato, Ensign Yoshida Mitsuru, an
assistant radar officer in his early twenties, gives a firsthand account of Yamato's
tragic voyage and his unexpected survival.
Censors under the American Occupation prevented publication of Requiem
for Battleship Yamato after its completion in 1946 because they considered
it to be "an instance of the Japanese
militaristic spirit" (p. xxix). The book finally got published in 1952, after the Occupation restrictions
had been lifted. The book underwent many revisions from 1946 until its first publication
in 1952, and minor changes continued until Yoshida issued the definitive
edition in 1978, a year before his death. Richard Minear used the 1978 version
for this English translation.
Yoshida writes in a terse style, depicting nearly all events
from his viewpoint as a junior officer on Yamato. As a consequence, the
book gives limited historical background and does not provide the American
perspective. Persons interested in a complete history of Yamato's final
mission should read Russell Spurr's A Glorious Way to Die, which also
depicts events in the week prior to the great battleship's sinking. However,
Spurr's history provides details regarding actions and opinions of other
American and Japanese leaders and participants. Yoshida's abrupt writing style
leaves out many details, but the reader can glimpse the intense emotions of
Yoshida and the other men on Yamato. He has many reflections about
death, especially when in the sea after Yamato has sunk and when he
returned alive to the mainland. These extended reflections cannot be easily
summarized, but after his rescue he does conclude on his future, "Make of
this moment a turning point toward a life of constancy and dedication" (p.
151).
Minear worked together with many Japanese and American
experts to translate this book into English. The result turns out to be an admirable
translation of a very difficult Japanese literary work written in terse bungotai,
a literary style used for military documents and certain forms of poetry.
Minear also wrote a 30-page Introduction, which provides valuable,
well-researched background information on the Battle of Okinawa, battleships,
kamikaze attacks, Yoshida's life history, censorship, and the book's
distinctive form and style.
This book focuses more on the human side than the military
details of Yamato's doomed mission to Okinawa. Yoshida provides both
touching and harsh personal vignettes. Yoshida has a 33-year-old married man
who reports to him (p. 51). As part of Yoshida's responsibility as this man's
direct supervisor, he censors the letters to his wife. So he knows that this man's
wife is pregnant with their first child as Yamato leaves on its tragic
mission. In another heartbreaking story, one ensign who perished always kept
with him a photograph of a beautiful woman, so the other men on the ship were
quite envious (pp. 67-8). However, Yoshida finds out later that this woman was
not his girlfriend, but rather his younger sister, now completely alone in the
world since her parents had died, and she had no other brothers or sisters. In
a story that illustrates the Imperial Japanese Navy's severe discipline,
Yoshida relates how a higher-ranking officer hits him in the face for failing
to discipline physically a sailor who failed to salute, "an offense that
normally would call for five blows of the fist" (p. 21).
Like the Kamikaze Corps members who used planes to make suicide
attacks on Allied ships, the Navy designated Yamato's last mission as a
"special attack." A Japanese soldier or sailor assigned to a special
attack mission understood that he would die as part of a successful attack. Yoshida
and less than ten percent of his shipmates survived, but they still continued
on fighting, "As if wishing to quell pangs of conscience for having
survived, we petition blindly for special attack duty. Our requests are
granted, and we are posted again to special attack units" (p. 147).
This moving, grim personal account, which depicts the
tragedy and horror of war, deserves its place as one of the classic pieces of
literature on World War II.
Source Cited
Spurr, Russell. 1981. A Glorious Way to Die: The Kamikaze
Mission of the Battleship Yamato, April 1945. New York: Newmarket Press.
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