Okinawa and the Ryukyu Islands. Robert Walker
armed battleships ever constructed, displacing over 70,000 tons fully loaded and armed with the largest caliber of naval artillery ever placed on a warship. The Yamato had an extraordinary length of 863 feet (263 meters), a beam of 128 feet (39 meters) and a draft of 36 feet (11 meters). Originally intended to be a group of five such ships, these two were the only ones to be built. Neither survived World War II.
The Glasses’ rocks, a twin set of natural arches.
Although the Yamato saw action in 1944 at the Battle of the Philippine Sea and was damaged in the Japanese naval disaster of Leyte Gulf, by this stage of World War II the Empire of Japan was all but vanquished and near desperation. In April of 1945, in what was planned to be a final “special attack” (特攻; tokkō; lit. “suicide”), a euphemism for a suicide mission, the Yamato, along with nine other battleships, was ordered to sail to Okinawa and once there to beach itself and thereby implant its armory to defend the island. The mission was code-named Operation “Ten-go” (天號作戰 or 天号作戦; Kyūjitai or Shin-jitai) and is usually referred to as “Ten-gō Sakusen.” Once the ship had exhausted its munitions, or was destroyed, the crew was to join the island’s defenders.
The Yamato Memorial (大和慰霊塔) is a lonely memorial, but sacred and moving, for out at sea from this place thousands of men lost their lives in service to their country.
It never happened. Exiting Japan’s inland sea, the ship and its escorts were spotted by American submarines. On April 7th, attacking in three waves, US dive bombers pounded the Yamato with bombs and rockets while torpedoes pummeled the port side. Broken, battered and listing badly, the crew was ordered to abandon ship. As the great battleship capsized, it created a suction that drew hundreds of swimming crewmen back towards it to drown. As the ship began its final death roll, an enormous explosion ripped through it as fires had reached the ammunitions magazines. The resulting mushroom cloud was over 4 miles (6.4 kilometers) high and witnessed hundreds of miles/kilometers away on Kyūshū. Of the Yamato’s crew of 2,778, only 269 survived. The US Navy lost 10 aircraft and 12 airmen. Five of the other warships were also destroyed and several thousands of men on those ships perished as well.
This photo was taken from a carrier plane from the USS Yorktown shortly after the Yamato was destroyed by bombs and torpedoes and just before it sank.
The highlight of the Kure Yamato Museum is this 1:10 scale model of the battleship Yamato. It is 86 feet (26.3 meters) long. In Tokyo, at the Odaiba Maritime Museum (船の科学館; Fune no kagakukan), there is a 13-foot (4-meter) 1:20 scale model of the ship.
From the start of the attack, about 30 minutes after noon on April 7th, 1944, to the Yamato’s drop beneath the waves, about 2:30PM, it is estimated that the ship was hit by at least eleven torpedoes and eight bombs. The wreckage of the battleship was located in 1985 and explored more extensively in 1999. The remains of the Yamato lie under 1,115 feet (340 meters) of water in two main pieces. Undersea dive photographs show the bow portion, severed from the rest of the ship, in an upright position, the 7-foot (2-meter)-wide golden chrysanthemum crest still glowing in a faint hue. The midships and stern section are upside-down nearby, with two great holes in the bottom, the result of powerful internal explosions.
For the West, the message was clear. The battle convincingly demonstrated Japan’s willingness to sacrifice large numbers of its own citizens—as well as its remaining war machine—in increasingly impossible attempts, such as the Kamikazé (神風; lit. “Divine Wind”) missions, to stop the Allied advance on the Japanese home islands at any cost. Operation Ten-Go, had it been successful, would have resulted in thousands of soldiers dying in hand-to-hand combat.
There was simply no stopping the Japanese war machine. It is widely agreed by most historians that President Harry S. Truman’s decision to employ the atomic bomb against Japan was a direct result of the apparent willingness of Japan to sacrifice countless numbers of its citizens using suicidal tactics such as Operation Ten-Go and their resistance in the Battle of Okinawa. Although to this day there is no clear consensus among scholars and historians of the moral correctness of the decision to use the atomic bombs, the fact remains that Japan did not surrender until after the twin bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6th and 9th, respectively.
After the war, the Battleship Yamato became an object of intense interest and, in some quarters, veneration in Japan. It remains a very sensitive and controversial topic. One of the reasons the sinking of the Yamato is such an emotionally charged issue, and one that has such special significance in Japanese culture, is that the very word “Yamato” is used as a poetic name for Japan. The ship’s destruction and the disaster of Operation Ten-Go is eulogized, to one degree or another, in modern Japan and in popular Japanese culture, as a heroic, selfless but ultimately futile effort by the Japanese to defend their homeland. Thus, the Yamato is a symbolic emblem of great national pride and its fate has come to represent the end of the once invincible Imperial Japanese Navy, Japanese militarism and the Empire of Japan.
The nicest hotel in Tokunoshima Town is the Hotel Grand Ocean Resort. And the people running the place? They couldn’t be nicer either. It’s a pleasure to stay here.
The Cape Inutabu Memorial Tower was dedicated in April 1968 to the Yamato crew and all the seamen who died in Operation Ten-go on their way to defend Okinawa. In addition to many films and books published on the Yamato, there is a second memorial in mainland Japan. Opened in 2005 and built near the site of the former Kure shipyards in Hiroshima where the Yamato was built, the Kure Maritime Museum, commonly known as the Yamato Museum (大和ミュージアム; Yamato myuujiamu) is dedicated to the battleship and its engineering.
5 IŌTORISHIMA 硫黄鳥島
By all accounts this little islet, geographically located in the Amami group, should be included in Kagoshima Prefecture as it’s only 40 miles (65 kilometers) due west of Tokunoshima and thus way north of Okinawa. As the crow flies, it’s located 70 miles (112 kilometers) due north of Okinawa’s Cape Hedo and that’s much further north than either Yorontō or Okinoerabujima, both of which are in Kagoshima.
Yet, despite this geography, whenever one finds a reference to Iōtorishima (硫黄鳥島; Iwō-tori-shima) it’s invariably described as being 135 miles (216 kilometers) northeast of Kume Island, which is almost 60 miles (96 kilometers) west of Okinawa and nowhere near Iōtori. So what’s the connection? Well none, geographically, but politically the reason is grounded in history. Long ago it was included in the Ryukyu Kingdom and another name for it was “Okinawa Torishima,” or in English “Okinawa Bird Island.” An island of birds? Perhaps, but there’s a reason for this as well. It’s common in the Ryukyus to call any minor, offshore, unnamed islet “Bird Island” (鳥島; Torishima). And historically this Bird Island, which is an active volcano, was mined for its sulphur by Okinawans, not people from Amami. Sulphur was an important source of tribute in the Ryukyu Kingdom.
Pot of Gold in Tokuno? A sugar cane field, the ocean in the background and a rainbow after a drench—it’s all anyone might ask for—except perhaps for that pot of gold.