Posted on 11/27/2005 4:41:55 PM PST by blam
Battleship film revives Japan's pride in wartime generation
(Filed: 28/11/2005)
Sixty years after the colossal battleship Yamato was sunk, the pride of Japan's wartime navy is once again an object of fascination.
Almost 400,000 visitors have flocked to see a full-scale replica of the deck of the Yamato in Onomichi, western Japan. The ship was reconstructed for the shooting of a film, Men of the Yamato, which will be released next month.
The £3million replica deck, made for the film Men of the Yamato, has attracted 400,000 Japanese visitors
The Yamato, the largest battleship ever built, was considered indestructible by the Japanese. But little more than three years after it was completed it was sunk in the East China Sea in April 1945 on a suicidal mission that cost the lives of almost its entire crew of 3,000 men.
The film does not glorify the sacrifice, graphically portraying the anguish of the crew's families and the bloody end to which the men came as their ship was swarmed by US Navy planes.
But, like other recent Japanese war movies, it glosses over Tokyo's aggression and focuses instead on the bravery and comradeship of the men who fought.
Growing tension in East Asia, particularly since North Korea launched a missile over Japanese airspace in 1998, has led to a rethink of the post-war commitment to pacifism. As Japan's Self Defence Forces have been despatched to provide logistical support for the US-led war in Afghanistan and to Iraq for post-war reconstruction, it has become more acceptable to be interested in military matters.
The true hero of the film is the Yamato itself. The production company Toei spent £3 million building the replica deck to ensure the film gives a powerful sense of the scale of the ship and the awe it inspired in the wartime nation.
The ship displaced 65,000 tons and was 862 feet long but was largely obsolete by the time it was built. The Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour amply demonstrated the vulnerability of battleships to aerial attack.
The anniversary of the ship's sinking was also marked in April by the opening of a museum dedicated to the Yamato in Kure, near Hiroshima, where the original was built. The museum displays items recovered from the Yamato after it was located on the sea bed in 1985.
Under pressure to take a larger share of the burden of fighting in 1945, the Japanese navy elected to turn the Yamato into a gigantic kamikaze ship. With neither air cover nor enough fuel to return, the Yamato was ordered to sail to Okinawa, where the Americans were fighting their way on to Japanese soil.
It was destroyed the day after setting sail, becoming the epitome of the "smashed jewel", a rallying cry for the entire nation to achieve beauty in defeat by dying without surrendering.
The Yamato continues to loom large in popular consciousness. One of the country's most famous cartoon series is Spaceship Yamato, set in a future when the Yamato is recovered from the sea and flown into space. Yamato model ships are the must-have toy for boys.
The Yamato offers the Japanese a relatively safe outlet for feelings of pride in - and sympathy for - the war generation. Few express admiration for the wartime leaders or for soldiers who fought in China, for example, where massacres were committed.
But the navy's reputation was not sullied by atrocities while its leader, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto, opposed the catastrophic war with the United States.
The young sailors of the Yamato are widely seen as victims, who fought bravely to protect their country even as they were betrayed.
The film's director, Junya Sato, has stressed it is an anti-war film. "We need to think about what needs to be done so that Japan doesn't go to war again. Making a film about the Yamato is a step in that direction," he said.
However, others fear a negative reaction from a war movie which focuses only on Japanese suffering.
"Given the strained relations with China I wonder whether this is a good time to make this movie. It could be misunderstood as glorifying the ship and the war," said one visitor to the reconstructed Yamato.
"Old man, you fought well, but you lost in the end."
--Rudyard Kipling
Thanks for the correction, I'll look for the book.
I remember reading that story as a kid and I have always been struck by it. The USN should always be proud of the fight by those ships as one of its finest moments.
You are thinking of the Shinano. Built on a Yamato class hull, it was the largest carrier until the USS Enterprise (CVN 65). It never really had an operational airgroup, since by the time the Shinano was at sea, the IJN lost most of it's experienced pilots. So it was used mostly as an aircraft transport during its short career. The Shinano was sunk in 1944 by the USS Archerfish (mostly due to the IJN ignoring ASW)
The Akagi was a conversion of a WWI era battlecruiser that would have otherwise been scrapped due to the naval treaties of the interwar years. The Akagi (along with the Kaga, Hiryu and Soryu) was sunk at the Battle of Midway.
When I was a kid, I lived in Japan. My Pop and I built a model of Yamato. It was 5 feet long! My mother made us put it up so she could have the dining room table back for Thanksgiving.
I well remember being outraged at the Japanese celebration of December 7. They had all the old Rising Sun battle flags flying. They probably don't do that anymore.
I went to Pearl for the first time in 1994. It was full of old Japanese guys. I asked one why they were there, he told me that they wanted to see where it started. I have been told by others since then that the old guys gloat about the victory at Pearl. I believe that many want to remember the "honorable" part of the war. Oh well they will all be passed on soon and the Memorial will have a drop in attendance, I believe.
LOL. How about the USS Hiliary?
No the aircraft in the post 8 are Curtiss SB2C-5 "Helldivers" divebombers SB=Scout Bomber 2 C=Curtiss
Again, I had to turn to Google to answer my own question. There were 4 torpedos that struck the Shinano. Three did not penetrate the armour plating that was left over from its days as a battleship hull.
The 4th one happened to strike at a jointline (it is unclear from the source if it was a weld joint or riveted). Anyway, just above the joint line there were a bunch of diagonal braces from the hull up to the deck (again, unclear -- I imagine there were several decks so I don't know which one they went to). The upper part (above the joint) was braced in place and the lower part (below the joint) was free to move under the impact of the torpedo. It opened up the seam and the water flooded in.
Without the diagonal braces, the armour plating at that point would have probably held, too, like the armour at the other three torpedo strikes. But, it did not because of the design. What I don't know is if the diagonal bracing was in the original hull (perhaps for bracing to support the huge gun turrets) or if it was added to support the aircraft carrier deck.
I always thought that the Iowa class battleships were esthetically superior -- even if they couldn't have stood toe to toe with the Yamato in battle.
Blowed up real good!
My wife and I are considering a cruise, I've told her that if anyone says the ship is "Unsinkable", we'll walk to shore if we have to. 'Sides as a former submariner, I think all that "Going on top of water", is unnatcheral anyway.
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