Posted on 04/07/2017 5:05:38 AM PDT by Bull Snipe
IJNS Yamato and four escorts are sunk by U.S. Navy carrier aircraft while en-route to attack American forces at Okinawa.
I have a long handwritten letter describing a pilot’s attack on the Yamato, written by “Youngie”. His gunman was wounded, but his shot-up Grumman landed safely. The Grumman was pushed over the side with the engine “still running sweetly”.
Wrongo.
It was purposely put on the bottom on the sea so that it could be retrofitted as a space battleship!
Huge and beautiful ship, boasting 18” guns. Now home to millions of fish, courtesy of the United States Navy.
She, like all of her kind, had gone the way of the bireme and the 74 gun ship of the line.
Lest we forget..... what a terrible culture the people ran the Japanese government reflected, the militant Muslims of their day ........ I will never apologize for dropping the Atomic Bombs.... https://www.publichealth.va.gov/docs/vhi/pow.pdf
I have a Japanese movie from 2005 called Yamato. It tells the story from a Japanese perspective, and it it avoids demonizing us.
Maybe I’ll put it on today.
FDR passed on April 12, 1945
There’s a book “Japanese Destroyer Captain” that’s a great read...he survived the war and was in the Yamato’s final mission. Google’s preview covers part of that if you’re interested. I was just about to pull my copy out of storage for my oldest son to read.
https://books.google.com/books?id=gm4s025ApT0C&printsec=frontcover&dq=japanese+destroyer+captain+book&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjY58jmuJLTAhUJ8IMKHSAFCJEQ6AEIGjAA#v=onepage&q=japanese%20destroyer%20captain%20book&f=false
That’s an excellent book. He was there at the beginning of things in China in 1932, and made it to the end.
He also had an interesting (and somewhat less than heroic) take on Kennedy’s PT109 incident.
Read that book in the 60s when it was first published. A first rate memoire.
I read that book. Great read.
I read that book. Great read.
The Yamato had an unorthodox mission. It was supposed to beach itself, disgorge ground troops and operate as a fixed gun platform.
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