Requiem for Battleship Yamato

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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.

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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.

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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. 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 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.

Requiem for Battleship "Yamato"

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.

Requiem for Battleship 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. 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 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. It is phenomenally bizarre that the Japanese military found itself in such a position; with almost everyone falling over almost everyone else to see who could kill themselves soonest. C'est magnifique, mais ce n'est pas la guerre. When he retraced his steps and ran up to me, I saw he was a young signalman.

Fea It might be Mishima porn ruddy cheeks, flashing grins, dashing uniforms and all served up with buckets of blood Fearing punishment, shoulders trembling, he studied my face intently. You undoubtedly felt bad about it afterwards.

But if you don't do it, it leaves a bad taste. It doesn't take a whole lot of effort. And you'll always feel good about it. Even as that thought registered, his fist landed a blow on my left cheek. Caught off guard, I reeled. She leaves behind only a sheet of white foam. It must be a torso from which all extremities — arms, legs, head — have been ripped off. Noticing four hunks scattered nearby, I pick them up and set them in front of me. As I lift them, they are still hot from burning; when I run my hand over them, they feel like the bark of a rough tree.

It is not grief and resentment. It is not fear. It is total disbelief. As I touch these hunks of flesh, for a moment I am completely lost in thought. The abandon ship buzzer sounded to both those rooms: In the instant the water rushes in, the black gang on duty are dashed to pieces, turned into drops of spray. Terror-stricken at the chunks of flesh?

Requiem for Battleship Yamato by Mitsuru Yoshida

What is more, the reports he himself transmits brim with the ferocity of the battle and the misfortunes of his shipmates. I look him straight in the eye and give him one blow on the cheek. His boyish face reddens; the quivering ceases. Already more than half those on the bridge are dead; it is nice to have much more room to move around in," "The torpedoes hit aft.

Floating in the air for a moment, the stern is mantled in pillars of flame, pillars of water. At the beginning of the war we flung a challenge to the world: Now we get a brilliant answer thrust upon us. How can we avoid a collision? Exasperated by our own paralysis, we struggle and finally manage to dodge Kasumi. For the first time since the battle began, laughter is heard on the bridge.

Are we laughing at ourselves? The officer in charge Meanwhile, he calmly recites the position of the rudder moment by moment. Suddenly he shouts twice, his voice understandably constricted: On Yamato's main tower the signal flag goes up: That he has the imperial portrait in his quarters and has locked the door from the inside. There is no surer way than this, to protect it with his life. Knees rubbing and shoulders touching, they attempt to bind each other's legs and hips to the binnacle. It would be a matter for shame if by any chance they should float to the surface.

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There was a nisei serving on Yamato! From California, he'd been at Keio University when the war started and was now intercepting Allied communications.

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Meanwhile, his brothers were fighting for the Allies in Europe. Yoshida uses katakana throughout, thus emphasizing the sense of immediacy, of reading a military dispatch. Naval officers, battleship captains, World War II buffs. Most everyone who knows anything about the Pacific War has heard of the Battleship Yamato - Japan's mighty flagship, one of the biggest warships ever built. Unfortunately, it was built too late, to fight the previous war. World War II was a war of air power in which carriers would make battleships obsolete.

The Yamato barely saw action before its final voyage, where it was sent to defend the Japanese homeland and was sunk within sight of port by American torpedo planes. Requiem for Battleship Yam Most everyone who knows anything about the Pacific War has heard of the Battleship Yamato - Japan's mighty flagship, one of the biggest warships ever built.

Mitsuru Yoshida was a junior officer aboard the Yamato, and one of the few survivors, so his story is interesting for historical reasons, but he's no great storyteller, nor is his individual story that interesting, so his account is simply a dry narrative about serving aboard the Yamato , then setting out on what everyone knew was its last voyage. Unlike some other officers, like Tameichi Hara or Hans von Luck , Yoshida doesn't spend any time trying to justify himself or explain that he was really against the war all along - he was just a junior officer serving as he was told.

There is one sad episode in his narrative in which he describes a Nissei crewman aboard the Yoshida who had family still back in California, and who died when the Yamato went down. Yoshida mentions writing to his mother in America after the war, and receiving a reply from her in which she was proud of her son's service, and his honorable death, despite the fact that he was fighting against her adopted country. This must have been the sort of divided mentality many Japanese-Americans, or Japanese with American relatives, felt, and indeed, Admiral Yamamoto and other high-ranking officers, who had lived and studied and traveled in the U.

Yoshida's memoir, however, is mostly just an account of the battle itself, and in its sparse prose and his very Japanese reflections on life and death and beauty, he humanizes an enemy that was deeply dehumanized to us during the war. I cannot, however, make an observation like that without noting that in fairness, the Japanese were guilty of even more atrocious dehumanization of their foes.

He went into the ocean when the Yamato went down, and was rescued afterwards, and spent time in the hospital coughing up oil, and lived until

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