16  TEN-GO

MITAJIRI ANCHORAGE

INLAND SEA OF JAPAN

APRIL 5, 1945

Perched in his command chair on the sixth deck of Yamato’s bridge tower, Vice Adm. Seiichi Ito watched the crew preparing the battleship for departure. Ito had been one of those who loudly opposed the operation, now called Ten-Go, which literally meant “heaven number one.” Ito, in fact, thought the whole tokko strategy was stupid, not for moral reasons—he was as much a samurai as the superpatriots—but because it was a waste of precious resources. Japan’s warriors—and their weapons—should be saved for the final battle in the homeland.

But Seiichi Ito was, above all else, a loyal officer. Now that the decision was made and the orders received, he had committed himself to the success of Ten-Go. He commanded the Imperial Japanese Navy Second Fleet and, with his flag aboard Yamato, would lead the task force into battle against the Americans.

Seiichi Ito was fifty-four, a tall, stooped man with a square-cut, rugged face. Like his fellow admirals Toyoda and Oikawa, Ito had spent most of the war in Combined Fleet and Imperial Japanese Navy general staff assignments. All his requests for a major sea command had been denied. To Ito, it now seemed a stroke of irony that his first sea battle would, in all probability, be his last. It would probably also be the last for the Imperial Japanese Navy.

Ten-Go would be the first of a series of massed kamikaze attacks called kikusui, which meant “floating chrysanthemum.” Like most Japanese war plans, the enchanting label masked a macabre strategy. The name came from the heraldic device of the fourteenth-century warrior Masashige Kusunoki, who personified the classic self-sacrificing warrior. According to legend, Kusunoki, obeying the command of the emperor Go-Daigo, led his army into certain death against vastly superior forces. Surrounded by the enemy and his situation hopeless, Kusunoke and six hundred of his surviving troops committed seppuku—the samurai ritual suicide by disembowelment.

The kikusui attacks were supposed to emulate Kusunoki’s sacrifice, but on an even grander scale. Involving more than two thousand tokko aircraft, they would attack the U.S. fleet in ten waves.

The kikusui operation had been envisioned purely as a series of airborne tokko attacks directed from the Kanoya base by Admiral Ugaki. No one had suggested that they be accompanied by a surface attack of Imperial Japanese Navy warships.

Not until a few days ago. Now the mighty Yamato and her entourage were about to embark on their own tokko mission.

Aboard New Mexico, Adm. Raymond Spruance read the decoded message. It had been transmitted that afternoon, April 5, from the Imperial Japanese Navy Combined Fleet commander to the commander in chief of the Second Fleet. Like almost all Japanese military communications, the intercepted message was deciphered by U.S. cryptologists in Makalapa, Hawaii, then flashed to Chester Nimitz’s headquarters in Guam, where it was relayed to Raymond Spruance off the shore of Okinawa.

It was the official order for an operation called Ten-Go.

Yamato and the Second Destroyer Squadron will sally forth in a naval special attack via Bungo Channel at dawn of Day Y-minus-one; at dawn of Day Y they will charge into the seas west of Okinawa and will attack and destroy the enemy’s invasion fleet. Day Y will be 8 April.

The intercepted report came as no real surprise to Spruance and his intelligence officers. For the past week reconnaissance aircraft had observed the Japanese fleet maneuvering in the Inland Sea as if preparing for the long-expected breakout. That they were coming through the Bungo Strait, the wide passage between Kyushu and Shikoku, was also no surprise. Their only other route would have been westward through the narrow Shimonoseki Strait, between the tips of Honshu and Kyushu, which were dangerous waters for a warship the size of Yamato. The strait was shallow, only 10 fathoms in places, and had been sown with mines by B-29 bombers. The strait was already littered with the hulks of unlucky ships that had stumbled into mines.

So the Imperial Japanese Navy fleet—what remained of it—was coming out to fight. To an old battleship sailor like Spruance, it presented a tantalizing possibility. He could send Task Force 54, Rear Adm. Mort Deyo’s formidable array of battleships and cruisers, to confront the Japanese in what would likely be the last great surface engagement of the war. Or he could use the more expedient weapon—the warplanes of Marc Mitscher’s Fast Carrier Task Force.

Or both, and let the quickest take the prize.

In either case, he had more to worry about than the Yamato surface force. He also had a report that the Japanese would be timing the surface attack with a simultaneous massive air assault and a counterattack from the Japanese ground forces on Okinawa. The battle for Okinawa was heating up.

The crew of the Yamato stopped in midstride. The voice of their executive officer, Capt. Jiro Nomura, was booming over the bullhorn: “Distribute sake to all divisions.”

It was an announcement seldom heard aboard a warship of the Imperial Japanese Navy. On this, the eve of Yamato’s last battle, both Nomura and Yamato’s commanding officer, Rear Admiral Ariga, had decided to memorialize the occasion. Except for a skeleton crew of lookouts and duty officers, the crew of Yamato was going to have a monumental party. The galleys were ordered open. Cooks were instructed to break out all the extra rations. There was no longer a need to keep the best food and drink in reserve. Crates of sake were opened and bottles distributed to all the divisions on the ship.

The cooks prepared delicacies of sekihan, a red bean paste, and okashiratsuki, sea bream served with the head still intact, all washed down with vast quantities of warm sake. Emboldened by alcohol and the brash hubris of youth, the sailors on the mess decks were making boisterous toasts, drinking to one another’s death.

Whether any of them actually welcomed death was immaterial. By training and upbringing each was ensnared in a complex code of loyalty to his fellow sailors, his family, and ultimately to the emperor. The fear of disgrace held more sway over them than the fear of death.

One of the celebrants on the mess deck was eighteen-year-old Kazuhiro Fukumoto. It took only a couple of sakes, and the inexperienced young sailor was soused. Fukumoto was finding it hard to take all this mawkish talk about honor, death, and disgrace seriously. He was convinced that Yamato was unsinkable. It was an unreasoning belief, a gut feeling that came just from being aboard such a dreadnought. How could a warship of this size and firepower be sunk? It was impossible. Sure, in the thick of battle some of the crew might be killed by bullets and bombs. Still, the odds were in his favor. Given the number of crew aboard, his chances of being one of those killed were very slim.

He hadn’t discussed Yamato’s mission with his parents, who lived in Kure, Yamato’s home port. With most of the crew, Fukumoto had been given a few days’ shore leave to say farewell and settle his affairs. He’d had dinner with his parents and younger sister and told them to watch after his things while he was gone. For Fukumoto, it wasn’t an emotional farewell. He didn’t expect to be away for long.

In the officers’ main wardroom, they were drinking not only sake but real Scotch whisky, part of the loot seized from the British after the capture of Singapore nearly four years earlier. Someone had pulled out the hand-cranked turntable, and they were singing along to the scratchy music from their collection of 78-rpm vinyl records. Even the skipper, Rear Admiral Ariga, and the executive officer, Captain Nomura, showed up, each bearing a huge bottle of sake.

Most of the officers were drunk, and Ariga, known as a hard drinker himself, was no exception. Forty-eight years old, Ariga had been in command of Yamato for only four months. He was a stern but fatherly commanding officer, revered by most of his young sailors. Their nickname for him was “Gorilla,” for his stout, ungraceful build and hairless head.

For once the stiff formality of navy protocol went by the boards. Nomura was swept up in a mock scrimmage, his jacket getting ripped. Junior officers took turns thumping Ariga’s bald, dome-shaped head. It was a wild, one-of-a-kind bash.

Soon after midnight, while most of the besotted crew was still stumbling to their bunks, the shadowy, taper-winged silhouette of a four-engine airplane passed high overhead. It was a B-29 reconnaissance bomber snapping pictures of the anchored battleship below, radioing its exact position back to Allied headquarters.

The early hours of April 6 were spent off-loading combustible materials and unnecessary stores. The deadline for mail was 1000, and the executive officer urged each officer and man to write a final letter to his family.

In his cramped quarters, Ens. Mitsuru Yoshida struggled to find words for a letter to his parents. He tried to push out of his mind the picture of his mother bent over in grief. Finally he wrote, “Please dispose of my things. Please, everyone, stay well and survive. That is my only prayer.”

One of Yoshida’s friends was Ens. Kunai Nakatami, who was a nisei—a Japanese American. Nakatami had been studying in Japan when war broke out. Conscripted into the navy, he was an assistant communications officer whose job was to interpret American emergency transmissions. Nakatami was a man whose homeland and enemy were the same. Two of his brothers were U.S. soldiers fighting in Europe. Most of his fellow officers aboard Yamato despised him for being an American.

Nakatami had just received a letter from his mother, via neutral Switzerland, which only added to his misery. “How are you?” his mother asked. “We are fine. Please do put your best effort into your duties. And let’s both pray for peace.” Nakatami broke down in tears, certain that he would never be able to reply to his mother’s letter.

Similar scenes were playing out on the nine other ships that would sail with Yamato. Aboard Yahagi, the cruiser that would lead the attack force into the East China Sea toward Okinawa, Capt. Tameichi Hara wrote a last letter:

The Combined Fleet has shrunk unbelievably in the past two years. I am about to sortie as skipper of the only cruiser remaining in the fleet—8,500-ton Yahagi. With my good friend Rear Adm. Keizo Komura on board, we are going on a surface tokko mission. It is a great opportunity as well as a great honor to be skipper of a ship in this sortie to Okinawa. Know that I am happy and proud of this opportunity. Be proud of me.

Farewell.

In his cabin, the commander of the task force was also writing letters. Vice Adm. Seiichi Ito had been married to his wife, Chitose, for twenty-three years. They had three daughters, two of whom were still teenagers, and a son, a twenty-one-year-old navy pilot based in Kyushu. Ito was inordinately proud of his son, but he also had a father’s gnawing trepidations about what would happen to him. As the aerial offensive shifted more and more to tokko tactics, Ito knew that his son would be a prime candidate for a one-way mission to Okinawa. Like his samurai model, the fourteenth-century general Kusunoki, who faithfully obeyed his emperor’s orders despite the overwhelming certainty of death and defeat, Ito accepted his fate. And by the same reasoning, he could also accept whatever fate awaited his son. It was the way of the warrior.

Later that morning, the executive officer gave the order for fifty-three cadets from the Eta Jima naval academy who had boarded two days earlier to disembark. The cadets were crestfallen. Aware of Yamato’s coming mission, several begged the executive officer to be allowed to remain. Nomura shook his head. He understood their sentiments, and he would feel the same way in their position. As untrained officers, they were more hindrance than help in the coming battle. They were Japan’s future skippers, and they should remain ashore.

Bitterly disappointed, the cadets made their way to the destroyer alongside, which would take them ashore. Along with them, Yamato’s Captain Ariga ordered another fifteen seriously ill men to disembark, as well as several over the age of forty whose large families would suffer undue hardship.

Standing at the rail of the destroyer, the cadets, most still hung-over from the previous night’s party, rendered a long final salute to Yamato.

They were running late. The task force was supposed to be under way at 1500, April 6, but there were delays off-loading nonessential supplies and combustibles. Not until 1524 did the captain give the order, “Unshackle from the buoy. All engines ahead slow.”

A rumble passed through the great ship, and a gray foam boiled up from beneath her stern. Slowly she eased away from her mooring and into the channel to join the waiting formation. Yamato and her nine escorts turned their bows southeastward, toward the Bungo Strait, making a speed of 12 knots. In the lead was Yahagi, with a row of destroyers trailing on either side. The flagship Yamato was securely positioned in her place of honor in the center.

Twilight was descending over the task force when the executive officer, Capt. Nomura, mustered the crew. The evening breeze swirled over Yamato’s bow, ruffling the uniforms of the men assembled on the deck. Against the setting sun, silhouettes of the hills on Kyushu were gliding past Yamato’s starboard rail.

Standing atop the number two turret, Nomura read the orders from the task force commander, Vice Admiral Ito: “This task force of the Imperial Navy, in cooperation with the army, is about to stake its entire air, sea, and land might on an all-out attack against enemy ships in the vicinity of Okinawa. The fate of the empire hangs in the balance.”

The crew faced the east, bowed to the emperor, and sang the Japanese anthem, “Kimi Ga Yo.” Then, as one, they shouted, “Banzai! Banzai! Banzai!”

From across the water, like echoes, came the same shouts from the other ships. It was an emotional moment. The men shook hands and assured each other that the next time they met would be at Yasukuni, the sacred shrine near Tokyo where the spirits of Japanese warriors resided.

Returning to his duty station on the top deck, Lt. Naoyoshi Ishida felt the same emotions, but he had no illusions about what lay ahead. At twenty-eight, Ishida was a decade older than most of the sailors who were cheering a fate they could only dimly imagine. Unlike many of Yamato’s junior officers who had been snatched from civilian universities and professional studies and hurriedly trained as officers, Ishida was a professional naval officer who had begun his career before the war.

Ishida’s wife and son were back in Kure. Like most of the ship’s officers, Ishida had been given three days’ leave before Yamato’s departure. During his leave, Ishida had purposely not allowed his thoughts to dwell on what lay ahead in the sea off Okinawa. He was a product of his culture and class. A willingness to die in the service of the emperor was an integral component of his being. The prospect of death in battle had never caused him a moment’s anguish—until his visit with his family was nearly finished.

Darkness had come to Kure when Ishida said his farewell to his family in the doorway of their tiny wood-and-paper home. He felt a pang of grief as he realized that his infant son, whom he had not seen until this visit, would soon be fatherless. He struggled for the words to say farewell to his wife. Even if he had been allowed to reveal the secret that neither he nor Yamato would return from the next sortie, he wouldn’t have been able to say it. It would simply have been too difficult for both of them.

He’d kissed his wife, then walked away. After she closed the door, he came back. He walked around the house, taking a last look at the fragile structure. He peered through the window to fix in his memory a last image of the family he would never see again. He said a silent goodbye and made his way to the Yamato.

Back aboard the battleship, he wrote a final letter to his parents. It wasn’t difficult. In the traditionally respectful language with which Japanese addressed their elders, he requested their forgiveness for not having said farewell. He asked that they please live long lives. He sealed the envelope, then began writing a letter to his wife. “You can marry again,” he wrote, “but whatever you do, please raise our son to be a good man.”

Ishida laid down his pen, stared at the letter, then tore it up. He tried writing another letter, then tore it up also. He couldn’t do it. Such a letter would cause her too much pain. The image of his beloved wife weeping over the letter would make it harder for him to perform his duties when Yamato entered battle.

Forget it, Ishida decided. There would be no farewell.