Suicide of a battleship

Press, 20 November 1982, Page 16

Suicide of a battleship

A Glorious Way to Die. By Russell Spurr. Hutchinson, 1982 341 pp. Illustrations, index. $31.50. (Reviewed by Oliver Riddell) Japan’s main tactical weapon from mid-1944 until the end of the Second World War was the kamikaze—“the divine wind.” Most people assume kamikaze was limited to fanatical airmen who tried to crash their aeroplanes, laden with bombs, into Allied ships. But the kamikaze tactic applied to a whole range of air and naval tactics, including human torpedoes and midget submarines. Russell Spurr has been a journalist in Japan and East Asia for nearly. 40 years. His book is about the kamikaze mission of a fleet, and particularly of the Yamato, at 71,659 tons fully loaded the biggest battleship ever built, which was.the fleet’s flagship. The book abounds in ironies. The Japanese built the world’s biggest and most powerful battleship, only themselves to make it obsolete by the carrier-borne attack on Pearl Harbour, in 1941. Yamato spent a disappointing war. By 1945, when the Americans had invaded Okinawa as a prelude to the main invasion of the mainland, it had become a political and emotional embarrassment to the Japanese Naval High Command, which had practically • no ships left and thus could play no useful part in the kamikaze missions being launched bn the United States fleet (with its British component) off Okinawa and covering the invasion. The navy decided to send the Yamato and a few remaining destroyers. So crippled was Japan by April. 1945, that it could only spare the fleet enough fuel to get to Okinawa. Once Yamato had hammered the Allied fleet, it would be beached on Okinawa and its crew would join the .soldiers there. Mr Spurr tells the story very well. He gives an account of the strategic and tactical considerations for both sides, the political circumstances, the personalities of some of the leading figures. He tells how the Yamato was prepared and what

its crew thought; he tells of how the American pilots fought and eventually sunk the Yamato and most of its support ships. His detailed re-creation and analysis oi the attack and sinking must become the standard work. He patches all the pieces together, gives them coherence, and ties the loose ends at the finish. His story is one of high drama, of savagery, of courage, of blind obedience, of great willpower, in doing so he has told a war story fit to rank with the most famous. The Yamato was intercepted within 200. miles of Okinawa; within two hours it had gone to the bottom with more than 3000 men. The Americans lost only 10 planes and 12 men. These figures give the clearest possible picture of a nation bent on suicide rather than surrender, and with leaders .prepared to trade on that sentiment. The book is well illustrated, with plenty of technical information on the Yamato and the aeroplanes which sank it.