Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
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
Yam-
ato
's drop beneath the waves, about 2:30
PM
, it is estimated that the ship was hit by at least el-
even torpedoes and eight bombs. The wreckage of the battleship was located in 1985 and ex-
plored 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 chrysanthem-
um 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 will-
ingness to sacrifice large numbers of its own citizens—as well as its remaining war ma-
chine—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 his-
torians 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
