AND WHERE IS THE NAVY?IMPERIAL PALACE, TOKYO
MARCH 29, 1945
The air raid sirens were wailing again. Ignoring them, Emperor Hirohito seated himself at the conference table in the shelter adjoining the imperial library. The sirens had become a fixture of life in Tokyo. Nearly three weeks before, on the night of March 10, 1945, American B-29s dropped incendiary bombs on the city. Nothing like it had been seen in history. Over a hundred thousand Japanese perished in the fires. More than a million were made homeless. Sixteen square miles of Japan’s capital were turned to charred rubble. The smoke and stench of the blazes still wafted through the Imperial Palace.
Now a month short of his forty-fourth birthday, Hirohito had reigned for nearly twenty years on the Chrysanthemum Throne. He was a fastidious, slightly built man who neither drank nor smoked. His reign was called “Showa,” meaning “radiating peace.”
How much longer the reign of Hirohito—or the Empire of Japan—might last was very much on the emperor’s mind. Another government was teetering on collapse. The previous prime minister, Gen. Hideki Tojo, had been removed in July 1944 after the defeat in the Philippine Sea and replaced with Gen. Kuniaki Koiso. Now Koiso was on his way out for the same reason: Japan had suffered calamitous setbacks at Leyte Gulf and Iwo Jima. The Allies were about to invade Okinawa.
The next government would be headed by a navy man, Admiral Kantaro Suzuki, with whom no one was pleased, including Hirohito and even the senior officers of the navy. Suzuki was eighty years old and more moderate than army militarists like Tojo and Koiso. The hard-liners were worried that the old admiral was inclined toward a negotiated peace with the Americans.
The militarists in the imperial government still held sway, just as they had when the decision was taken in 1941 to attack the United States. Never mind that their strident talk of bushido and imperial glory made them sound as if they’d come unhinged. No senior officer in either the Imperial Navy or Army was willing to speak what they all knew to be the truth: Japan had no chance of winning this war. To express such a thought was tantamount to treason. Even those who secretly favored a negotiated peace knew better than to reveal their feelings. That would make them a “Badoglio,” the detested Italian general and prime minister who surrendered his country to the Allies in 1943.
At the conference table with the emperor were his military advisors, the chiefs of staff of the army and the navy and their immediate subordinates. It was the role of Admiral Koshiro Oikawa, Imperial Japanese Navy chief of staff, to interface between His Divine Majesty and the Combined Fleet headquarters, whose commander in chief was Admiral Soemu Toyoda.
The chiefs of staff had presented to Hirohito the plan for the coming counteroffensive at Okinawa. The officers were keeping their eyes averted from the emperor’s divine countenance while Hirohito studied the details of the plan.
Occasionally the emperor stopped, squinting through his wire-framed spectacles, to ask questions. How many aircraft would be used in the attacks? Two thousand, Admiral Oikawa told him. Was that enough? the emperor asked. Oikawa explained that an additional fifteen hundred army aircraft would be available.
Hirohito seemed perplexed. More than a hundred thousand army troops were prepared to die to defend Okinawa, and several thousand tokko pilots would be sacrificed. He turned to Admiral Oikawa. “And where is the navy?”
Oikawa exchanged glances with his staff officers. None was sure how to answer. Did the emperor understand that the navy had been reduced to only a handful of ships? Did he know there was nothing the navy could do that would alter the situation at Okinawa?
Perhaps, but it didn’t matter. The emperor’s meaning was clear. It was not acceptable that the army should make so great a sacrifice while the navy’s ships remained clear of the battle.
The audience with the emperor was over. Oikawa and his staff returned to the Navy Ministry. They had only a few days to decide what the Imperial Japanese Navy should sacrifice in the battle for Okinawa.
And where is the navy? The emperor’s question demanded an answer. In his office a few miles southwest of the capital, the commander in chief of the Combined Fleet, Adm. Soemu Toyoda, agonized over the navy’s options.
Toyoda was, if nothing else, a survivor. He had been one of those opposed to a war with the United States, viewing it as un-winnable. Thereafter he had been relegated to administrative positions, too senior to receive a division or fleet command. He was thrust into the topmost naval command post by virtue of attrition after Yamamoto was killed at Bougainville and his successor, Admiral Mineichi Koga, was lost on a flight to the Philippines.
At age fifty-seven, round-faced and thick-bellied, Toyoda was neither a great strategist nor an inspiring leader. His job consisted mainly of mediating between the hard-liners who demanded an all-or-nothing decisive battle with the Americans and those who wanted to hoard the navy’s assets for the defense of the homeland.
With his staff assembled at a long conference table, maps on the wall behind him, Toyoda was hearing both sides. As usual, the shrill voices of the hard-liners were drowning out the others. Neither Toyoda or Oikawa or even the new prime minister, Admiral Suzuki, was willing to challenge them.
The spokesman for the hard-liners was the Combined Fleet chief of operations, Capt. Shigenori Kami. Kami was proposing that the Second Fleet, which included most of the navy’s still-battleworthy warships, throw its full weight behind the upcoming offensive. A force of ten warships, with the great battleship Yamato as its flagship, would hurl itself at the American fleet off Okinawa.
Yamato’s guns had greater range than anything the Americans possessed. After inflicting maximum damage on the U.S. ships, she would be beached. The great battleship would become a stationary artillery platform, and most of her crew would join the garrison defending Okinawa.
The sea assault would coincide with Admiral Ugaki’s massive aerial tokko attacks, while General Ushijima’s 32nd Army on Okinawa would take advantage of the situation and counterattack on the ground. It would be glorious. A last banzai! The enemy would be hurled back into the sea.
A stunned hush fell over the conference table. Then the more rational officers in the Combined Fleet staff spoke up. They thought it was preposterous. What possible effect could these ships have on the outcome of the Okinawa campaign? It would be a meaningless waste.
It would be even more meaningless, countered the hard-liners, to have them destroyed at anchor by enemy warplanes. Or, infinitely worse, surrendering them whole to invading American troops.
As usual, the hard-liners prevailed. Whether anyone believed such an attack could succeed hardly mattered. The plan had an almost mystical appeal—the mighty Yamato charging like a seaborne samurai directly at the enemy fleet, all guns roaring, sending the terrified enemy into a disorderly retreat. It was the kind of seductive, romantic theme that dwelled in the heart of every Japanese warrior.
Admiral Toyoda nodded his agreement. The hard-liners would have their way. Toyoda would sign off on what would be his last operational order of the war.
She was the mightiest warship ever constructed. Displacing 71,659 tons and capable of 27 knots, the superbattleship Yamato had the greatest firepower ever mounted on a vessel—more than 150 guns, including nine 18.1-inchers that could hurl 3,200-pound armor-piercing shells on a trajectory of 22.5 miles. Her massive armor was the heaviest ever installed on a warship, making her virtually impregnable to the guns of any ship in the world.
She was 863 feet long at her weather deck. Her bridge tower, rising 80 feet above the deck, had two elevators and six separate decks for command and control of the ship and her fleet. Her single massive smokestack swept aft at a rakish 25 degrees. Yamato’s interior contained five decks divided into a bewildering warren of spaces and watertight compartments. Mounted on her aft deck was an aircraft crane and two catapults over a hangar that accommodated six floatplanes.
Protruding from her bow was the golden two-meter-wide kikusui crest, a chrysanthemum-shaped symbol taken from a Japanese legend about a fourteenth-century warrior and martyr. Even the ship’s name, emblazoned in gold on her hull, possessed a mystical power. Yamato was a poetic and spiritual metaphor for Japan itself. In her gray, armored magnificence, she symbolized Japan’s early dreams of conquest. While Yamato still lived, so did Japan.
Yamato was the prototype of five such dreadnoughts that Japan intended to build. She was the product of the mid-1930s belief that if Japan were to face the United States in a future war, domination of the Pacific required that they build battleships larger than anything the United States might possess. American battleships were limited in size for practical reasons—the Panama Canal permitted passage of vessels no larger than about 63,000 tons.
She was designed and constructed in secret, in violation of the Washington and London treaties that limited the size and number of battleships. Yamato’s hull was laid down in 1937 at the Kure shipyard. Her sister ship, Musashi, was begun the following year in Nagasaki, and Shinano at Yokosuka. Construction of the remaining two Yamato-class battleships was canceled. Ultimately, only Yamato and Musashi entered service as battleships. After the historic Battle of Midway, when it became apparent that aircraft carriers held the key to victory at sea, the unfinished Shinanowas converted to an aircraft carrier. Shinano would have been the largest carrier ever deployed in World War II, but while transiting from Yokosuka to Kure in November 1944 to complete her fitting out, she was torpedoed by the U.S. submarine Archerfish.
Throughout Yamato’s construction, she was shielded by a massive canvas screen to prevent observation. Still shrouded in secrecy, the battleship was commissioned a few days after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Although she served as Admiral Yamamoto’s flagship at the Battle of Midway, Yamato was kept at the fringe of the battle and never saw action. In November 1943 she and Musashi were relegated to transport duty, hauling troops and supplies to the Solomons. The next month, while transporting troops to the Admiralty Islands, Yamato received her first blooding—two torpedoes in her starboard side from the U.S. submarine Skate—forcing her to retire to Truk for emergency repairs.
Not until October 1944 did Yamato finally fire her guns at an enemy. As the flagship of Admiral Kurita’s First Diversionary Striking Force, Yamato fought the U.S. fleet at the Battle of Leyte Gulf. Although Kurita’s warships were able to ambush the ships of the Taffy Fleet, sinking the escort carrier Gambier Bay and three destroyers, Yamato missed most of the glory. Dodging a torpedo, her captain steered her away from the thick of the battle. By the time he reversed course, Admiral Kurita had ordered a withdrawal.
Passing back into the Sibuyan Sea, Yamato received another chance to fire her guns into the sky when she came under attack from U.S. carrier planes. Again her luck held. She made it back to Kure, damaged but intact.
The “decisive battle” that Japanese admirals rhapsodized about—the mythical great clash between Japanese and American surface fleets that would send the enemy reeling in defeat—was a faded dream. The Imperial Japanese Navy no longer had a fleet. Its handful of surviving ships spent most of their energy darting around the Inland Sea, the long passage between Honshu and Shikoku, hiding from American bombers.
Yamato had become a ship without a mission. Now, finally, the great battleship had received her call to arms.
Ens. Mitsuru Yoshida took a last look up and down Pier 1 at the Kure naval port. As the officer in charge of the last boat to shore, it was his job to make sure no sailors from Yamato were left ashore. Missing the sailing of a warship was an offense punishable by death.
As Yoshida expected, there were no stragglers. By now all Yamato’s crewmen were surely on board. Yoshida stood for another long moment on the pier gazing around. Kure had been his home since he arrived three months earlier as the new assistant radar officer. The streets of the naval port were eerily quiet this morning, as if everyone was still asleep. In the pale morning light, the surface of the harbor was a slate gray. Yoshida felt a pang of homesickness. He had the feeling that this might be the last time he would ever stand on his native land.
The twenty-two-year-old officer stepped back into the motor launch and ordered the coxswain to return to their ship. As they sliced back across the slick water, Yoshida was struck once again by the sight of the great vessel moored at Buoy 26. The silver-white hull of Yamato dominated the harbor. Passing the cruiser Yahagi, moored next to Yamato, Yoshida could see blinker flashes being exchanged between the ships. Newly graduated from officer candidate school only three months ago, Yoshida could read the signals: “Preparations for getting under way completed.”
At 1500 that afternoon, March 29, 1945, Yamato eased away from her mooring. Yoshida was at his duty station on the bridge, an officer of the most junior rank in the midst of captains and admirals. Turning westward, the battleship followed the southern shoreline of Honshu, past the port of Hiroshima.
Along the way, Yamato’s skipper, Rear Adm. Kosaku Ariga, ordered drills for the crew. While the ship turned and circled, the crew practiced antiaircraft and antiship exercises.
That evening, after they’d dropped anchor at the Mitajiri anchorage, near Ube on the narrow gulf separating Honshu from Kyushu, Captain Ariga assembled his crew of three thousand men. A stillness settled over the men on the deck as Ariga made his announcement: Yamato would be the mainstay of a task force sailing to counter the expected American landings on Okinawa. He hoped that they would rise to the occasion and live up to the expectations of the navy.
For a moment the only sound on deck was the collective breathing of the men. Ariga’s announcement came as no real surprise. Everyone knew what was happening at Okinawa. For the past week they’d heard the rumors: Yamato would soon be going into action. Now it was official.
Then the cheering began. Like all Japanese fighting men, they had been demoralized by the steady drumbeat of bad news—the Philippines, Saipan, Iwo Jima, now Okinawa. The pent-up frustration and anger came spilling out of them. The sailors yelled and laughed and applauded. Finally they were going to teach the Americans a lesson. The big guns of the Yamato were going to blow the enemy to hell.
The truth still hadn’t sunk in. The captain had stopped short of actually saying that they were going on a suicide mission. Seconds later, the voice of the executive officer, Capt. Jiro Nomura, cleared up any doubt. “The time has come,” he said. “Kamikaze Yamato, be truly a divine wind!”
That night Yoshida lay in his bunk reading a biography of the philosopher Spinoza. It was a rare moment. Between standing watches, exercising his division of sixteen men, and performing endless antiaircraft and damage control drills, there had been little time for the pleasure of reading.
In his brief time aboard Yamato, Yoshida had learned that his fellow junior officers fell into two categories. There were the professionals, most of whom came from the Eta Jima naval academy, and there were those like Yoshida, who had been plucked from civilian life and rushed through officer candidate school. Most of the academy graduates were hard-liners who embraced the samurai ethos. They loudly proclaimed their willingness to die for the emperor, and they heaped scorn on anyone who suggested that suicide was a senseless tactic.
Most of the recently commissioned officers were of a different mind-set. Like Yoshida, they were university students whose lives had been interrupted by military service. Most had no use for the bushido nonsense of the hard-liners, but they had the sense to shut up about it. To Yoshida, there was a difference between being willing to die in the line of duty and throwing yourself at the enemy in a suicidal charge. He hadn’t volunteered to die.
It no longer mattered. Yoshida was a loyal son of Japan. His fate was bound with that of Yamato.