Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
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 ilms and topics 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 en-
gineering.
5
IŌTORISHIMA
硫黄鳥島
By all accounts this little islet, geographically located in the Amami group, should be in-
cluded in Kagoshima Prefecture as it's only 40 miles (65 kilometers) due west of Tokunoshi-
ma and thus way north of Okinawa. As the crow flies, it's located 70 miles (112 kilometers)
