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ashore along with the sick. Although those leaving Yamato expressed formal regrets, few of their shipmates were fooled. They perceived the sense of reprieve among those who boarded launches for the pier. Some sailors, especially older ones, dispatched their possessions home. Almost all wrote a parting letter. In Yamato’s gunroom, at sea on the night of 6 April, an ironic voice demanded: “Which country showed the world what aircraft could do, by sinking the Prince of Wales?” There was a vogue for Tolstoy among the battleship’s officers, and Ensign Sakei Katono was reading War and Peace. Ensign Mitsuru Yoshida, assistant radar officer, sat deep in a biography of Spinoza, haunted by thoughts of all the other books he would never live to read—he was a former law student at Tokyo University. Yoshida, twenty-two, had a friend aboard serving as an interpreter, monitoring American voice transmissions. Kunio Nakatani was a nisei—Japanese-American—from Sacramento, caught by the war at a Japanese university. Two of his brothers were serving with the U.S. Army in Europe, and in consequence Nakatani was considerably bullied by shipmates. The young man showed Yoshida a letter from his mother in the U.S., which had reached him via Switzerland: “How are you? We are fine767. Please put your best effort into your duties. And let’s both pray for peace.” Nakatani now sobbed as he recoiled from the irony of facing death at the hands of fellow Americans.

Through their last days afloat, the crew continued to exercise energetically, especially in damage control. On the night of 6 April, throughout the ship there was heavy drinking and some dancing, a carouse of the damned. In several messes there was folksinging, emotional renderings of “Kimigayo,” the national anthem. The captain, Rear-Admiral Kosaku Ariga, visited the gunroom bearing a large flask of sake for his young ensigns. There were ritual choruses of “Banzai!” Yet for all the fatalism on Yamato, there was scant enthusiasm. Amid the chronic stench of humanity in closed compartments, some men wondered aloud why, if this was indeed so noble a voyage, Combined Fleet commander Admiral Toyoda had not sailed with them. They debated whether American submarines or planes would send them to the bottom: “We shall be as vulnerable as a man walking alone on a dark night carrying only a lantern.” Rice balls were served for breakfast on the morning of 7 April, with the promise of bean soup and dumplings, their favourite battle rations, at supper.

Twenty officers and ratings, stiff with tension, clustered on the bridge. Admiral Ito sat in his high chair with arms folded, a posture he retained through the hours that followed. When they heard that an American sighting of the squadron had been radioed in plain language, rather than encoded, the little command group was irked by the casualness with which the enemy was treating them. At noon, as sailors ate rations at their stations, Ito said with a broad smile: “We got through the morning all right, didn’t we?” Forty-one minutes later, under intermittent rain and a sky empty of protective Japanese aircraft, the opening wave of Mitscher’s armada struck.

The first American bomb destroyed Yamato’s air-search radar, leaving the ship’s guns dependent on visual direction. “Using tracer to correct fire,” wrote Ensign Yoshida bitterly, “is like trying to catch butterflies in one’s bare hands.” Yamato’s gunnery had never been impressive—at Leyte Gulf the ship failed to score a hit. Now, while every weapon was in action, the relentless concussions of the main armament and clatter of light AA accomplished little. Again and again, bombers pounded the battleship and her escorts as they steered on southwards, while fighters strafed their upper decks. The curtain of Japanese fire scarred many American aircraft milling overhead, but downed pathetically few. On the ship, however, the carnage was appalling. Inspecting the radar compartment after an explosion beneath the bridge, Yoshida found only unrecognisable wrecked equipment and human body parts.

Torpedoes began to