Yamato

Following the book about some German soldiers on the Russian front towards the end of the second world war noticed at reference 1, I have now read the memoir at reference 2 by a Japanese sailor who survived the sinking of the battleship Yamato towards the end of the Pacific war. One of a few hundred from a crew of around 3,000 men, some very young, not twenty years old. Mitsuru appears to have made a successful return to thirty five years of civilian life, although he died relatively young at 56. One wonders whether he was a heavy smoker.

A book which was first written in 1946, but which took a while to make it through occupation censorship and then translation, this last in 1985. My version, snapped above, a decently produced hardback from Constable, comes with a substantial introduction by the translator, Richard. H. Minear, and a modest selection of photographs. A map would have been helpful, but I did well enough with gmaps on my telephone and the trusty Pergamon atlas on my knees. The one produced by Robert Maxwell in association with the Polish Army Topographical Service in 1968. An atlas which contained far better maps of Japan and the surrounding islands for present purposes than the slightly bulkier Times Atlas.

A short, easy-read book of about 150 pages, not counting the introductory material.

The author was called up out of college and put through a short training course before he was posted to the Yamato as an ensign. In what sounds like the Japanese equivalent of our RNVR, the wavy navy, so not a proper officer, a matter which I imagine was important in the Japan of the time.

Discipline in this navy, and I dare say the other arms were much the same, was fierce. Officers went about their business with swagger sticks or canes, which seem to have been used pretty freely. Punching the side of the face seemed to be another sanction, used on junior officers at least, as well as seamen. Failing to return to one's ship before it left on a mission was a firing squad offence. As was, I believe, falling asleep on sentry duty in the Austro-Hungarian army of the Good Soldier Švejk. Can't imagine such goings on in the US Navy - not so sure about our own.

But espirit de corps was strong, with some evidence of same being the more or less ceremonial meals and drinking bouts before battles. The special cigarettes - described as a gift from the Emperor - distributed at such times. Discipline, in the main, held up during the three hour battle for the Yamato - although there was some fraying at the edges. This despite the fact that on this report the senior officers of the task force of which the Yamato was the centre were all on record as being against the mission and there were plenty of others who agreed with them. 

Bearing in mind that, as a radar officer, Yoshida was stationed on the bridge during the battle and did not have occasion to see what might have been going on down below.

It seems that three of the big naval powers - the UK, the US and Japan - spent the run up to the second war building enormous battleships, heavily armoured and with lots of guns, sporting main armament which fired shells weighing around a ton - say 2,000 pounds - at ranges which could be in excess of twenty miles. One direct hit from such a shell would sink a lesser ship - as we knew from the loss of the Hood to a lucky shot from the Bismarck.

A lot of the smaller guns - and there were a lot of them - were intended to provide protection against aircraft. And they were helped by radar, which, if nothing else, did provide some advance warning. But Yoshida writes of much drilling in the use of these guns using balloons as targets - a very poor substitute for attack by modern aeroplanes in the hands of skilled pilots.

And as it turned out, these battleships were largely obsolete by the time the war came, vulnerable to attack by both aeroplanes with bombs and torpedoes and submarines with their rather larger torpedoes. A vulnerability which was brought home to all concerned by the loss of the Prince of Wales and the Repulse to Japanese aerial attack in December 1941. The crucial role of torpedo bombers in crippling the steering gear of the Bismarck a few months earlier not being enough - although it was a bit of good luck which we badly needed. And then, at the end of the war, the Yamato was sent on a 'special attack mission' without air cover and was overwhelmed by successive waves of carrier based aircraft.

Special attack missions - in effect suicide missions - were a feature of the Japanese response to being driven back to their home islands by the US, of a piece with the roughly contemporary kamikaze attacks by massed aircraft. This sort of thing was not confined to the Japanese, although for them it was a honour rather than a punishment - thinking here of the punishment battalions used by both the Germans and the Russians on the Eastern Front, battalions which took horrific casualties. And then there are the various war films of my younger days featuring small bands of heroic criminals, sent in (on our side) on what were close to suicide missions. Notwithstanding, this memoir is preoccupied with death and with the business of dying, with at least some Japanese combatants being very concerned to make a good death - and very concerned about the likelihood that they might not. Human weakness might have its way.

In which connection it seems that Japanese naval officers were issued with short lengths of light rope which they could use, if necessary, to tie themselves to their sinking ship, a precaution against resolve weakening at the last minute. Other items in their battle-stations pockets were candy, soda and whisky.

There was also, on this account, survivor guilt when, against the odds, in this case about ten to one against, one survived. With the result that the survivors of this special attack mission volunteered for and were posted to another.

One part of doing it properly was writing farewell letters to one's loved ones. I was very struck by Mitsuru writing of the desolation that comes over one when one has posted one's last letter, perhaps a few days before the last battle. One has cut one's ties with the world and only death is coming. Bearing in mind that a lot of the sailors involved would be in their early twenties, perhaps with very young wives, and that few would be much over forty.

Something of the same sort being the chance sighting of early cherry blossom as they left the home islands. See page 17.

Oddments

These large ships were big and complicated. It took lots of time and effort, lots of tedious and tiring drills, to get them and their crews fit for action. And on this account, the Yamato was not so fit for what was to be its last battle. Not least because the crew was tired after the incessant drills.

One complication was the fact that if the ship started to list it became impossible to move the big shells of the main armament about, and the ship lost a large part of its firepower. List - often caused by torpedoes blowing holes in the hull - was corrected by controlled, balancing flooding, the Yamato being divided into more than 1,000 separate compartments for this purpose. But the more flooding, the lower the ship was in the water and the slower. Another problem.

And then there was the power grid. A lot of stuff was powered by electricity, and without electricity it was useless. There was alternative power and there were workarounds but it all reduced effectiveness.

Another problem, probably terminal, was that when there was a lot of list, the ship exposed the part of the hull below the belt of protective armour. Easy meat for torpedoes. All of which accounted for the presence of a prominent listometer on the bridge. Yet another dial to watch.

The story about the captain lining up the crew to tell them about their special mission mentioned at reference 1, does seem to be roughly true, with the crew being lined up on deck, at night, about a week before the battle, for the purpose. See page 8. With the executive officer capping the captain's peroration with: 'The time has come. Kamikaze Yamato, be truly a divine wind'.

Conclusions

A good memoir from a bad place. Hopefully this post will serve to promote it.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/03/we-germans-interim-report.html.

Reference 2: Requiem for Battleship Yamato - Yoshida Mitsuru - 1946, 1985, 1999. Constable.

Reference 3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mitsuru_Yoshida. A stub.

Reference 4: https://www.usni.org/people/yoshida-mitsuru. A signpost.

Reference 5: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_battleship_Yamato.

Reference 6: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Minear.