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By Root 1030 0

’s deck, where a half-naked officer stood gazing up at their American tormentors. Hysterical, waving a sword, he cried “Banzai!” again and again. Another officer was amazed and irked to see some sailors sitting on the foredeck, eating hardtack or smoking, passively awaiting their fate. The ship tilted more steeply still, causing men in scores to fall or jump into the sea, while gun mountings and great fragments of twisted metal broke loose and tumbled overboard. Yoshida wrote: “At the instant Yamato, rolling over, turns belly up and plunges beneath the waves, she emits one great flash of light and sends a gigantic pillar of flame high into the dark sky…Armour plate, equipment, turrets, guns—fragments of the ship fly in all directions. Soon, thick dark brown smoke, bubbling up from the ocean depths, engulfs everything.”

“The prettiest sight I’ve ever seen,” said American Avenger gunner Jack Sausa. “A red column of fire shot up through the clouds, and when it faded Yamato was gone.” Fires are thought to have triggered a huge magazine explosion as the battleship turned turtle. The smoke pall was visible on Kyushu, a hundred miles distant. It was 1423, less than two hours after the first American attack. Groaning, choking men struggled through the oil coating the sea, “like thrashing around in honey.” Some used their last strength to drown themselves. A few sang. As smoke cleared and the sky brightened, an officer cried: “Hooray! We’ve arrived in the next world!”

The last American attackers departed at 1443, leaving just two Mariner reconnaissance floatplanes circling the battle scene. One of these, defying the nearby enemy, landed to rescue a downed American pilot. The surviving Japanese destroyers were much slower to pick up their countrymen struggling in the water. They awaited formal orders from the mainland to break off the Okinawa operation, which were received only at 1750. Some 269 of Yamato’s men were then recovered, while 3,063 perished, along with 1,187 of the escort crews. After the war, Yoshida wrote to the mother of Nakatani, his dead nisei friend from Sacramento. She answered: “Nothing gives me greater joy770 than to know that Kunio fought to the very end…and that he attained a death of which, as a Japanese, he need not be ashamed.” Mothers need to believe such things to make their losses endurable, yet this was the most futile of all kamikaze operations. The only consolation for the Japanese was that during the American planes’ absence from the fleet, a suicide plane hit and badly damaged Hancock, killing seventy-two men and injuring eighty-two. Yet by the time the carrier’s aircraft returned at 1830, having missed the Yamato battle, thanks to effective damage control the ship was able to receive them. The destruction of Ito’s squadron771, still 250 miles north-west of Okinawa, cost Mitscher’s squadrons just ten planes and twelve men killed. Back on the Yorktown, Air Group 9 sang: “Yamato been a beautiful BB, but BB, you should see yourself now!” It had been a turkey shoot. Mitscher was irritated that four Japanese destroyers escaped.

THE DESTRUCTION of Yamato was a mere sideshow, alongside the continuing battle of attrition between kamikazes and American ships. A major attack by 115 aircraft on 27 April disappointed the Japanese. Only ten ships were damaged. The attackers did better on 3 and 4 May, sinking three vessels and killing 450 sailors. At 1005 on 11 May, the first of two Zeroes ploughed into the flight deck of Mitscher’s flagship, Bunker Hill, starting devastating fires which raged through the ship. Thirty planes on deck carried 12,000 gallons of fuel, all of which burned or exploded. In a succession of skilful manoeuvres, Captain George Seitz saved Bunker Hill from absolute destruction by swinging her broadside to the wind, to prevent smoke and flame from engulfing the hull. A steep turn caused tons of fuel to spill harmlessly overboard, but fires burned for hours, asphyxiating scores of men belowdeck, including many firefighters. In the engine and boiler rooms, miraculously undamaged, crews laboured