The Twilight Warriors (19 page)

S
he was the mightiest warship ever constructed. Displacing 71,659 tons and capable of 27 knots, the superbattleship
Yamato
had the greatest firepower ever mounted on a vessel—more than 150 guns, including nine 18.1-inchers that could hurl 3,200-pound armor-piercing shells on a trajectory of 22.5 miles. Her massive armor was the heaviest ever installed on a warship, making her virtually impregnable to the guns of any ship in the world.

She was 863 feet long at her weather deck. Her bridge tower, rising 80 feet above the deck, had two elevators and six separate decks for command and control of the ship and her fleet. Her single massive smokestack swept aft at a rakish 25 degrees.
Yamato
’s interior contained five decks divided into a bewildering warren of spaces and watertight compartments. Mounted on her aft deck was an aircraft crane and two catapults over a hangar that accommodated six floatplanes.

Protruding from her bow was the golden two-meter-wide
kikusui
crest, a chrysanthemum-shaped symbol taken from a Japanese legend about a fourteenth-century warrior and martyr. Even the ship’s name, emblazoned in gold on her hull, possessed a mystical power.
Yamato
was a poetic and spiritual metaphor for Japan itself. In her gray, armored magnificence, she symbolized Japan’s early dreams of conquest. While
Yamato
still lived, so did Japan.

Yamato
was the prototype of five such dreadnoughts that Japan intended to build. She was the product of the mid-1930s belief that if Japan were to face the United States in a future war, domination of the Pacific required that they build battleships larger than anything the United States might possess. American battleships were limited in size for practical reasons—the Panama Canal permitted passage of vessels no larger than about 63,000 tons.

She was designed and constructed in secret, in violation of the Washington and London treaties that limited the size and number
of battleships.
Yamato
’s hull was laid down in 1937 at the Kure shipyard. Her sister ship,
Musashi
, was begun the following year in Nagasaki, and
Shinano
at Yokosuka. Construction of the remaining two
Yamato
-class battleships was canceled. Ultimately, only
Yamato
and
Musashi
entered service as battleships. After the historic Battle of Midway, when it became apparent that aircraft carriers held the key to victory at sea, the unfinished
Shinano
was converted to an aircraft carrier.
Shinano
would have been the largest carrier ever deployed in World War II, but while transiting from Yokosuka to Kure in November 1944 to complete her fitting out, she was torpedoed by the U.S. submarine
Archerfish
.

Throughout
Yamato
’s construction, she was shielded by a massive canvas screen to prevent observation. Still shrouded in secrecy, the battleship was commissioned a few days after the attack on Pearl Harbor. Although she served as Admiral Yamamoto’s flagship at the Battle of Midway,
Yamato
was kept at the fringe of the battle and never saw action. In November 1943 she and
Musashi
were relegated to transport duty, hauling troops and supplies to the Solomons. The next month, while transporting troops to the Admiralty Islands,
Yamato
received her first blooding—two torpedoes in her starboard side from the U.S. submarine
Skate—
forcing her to retire to Truk for emergency repairs.

Not until October 1944 did
Yamato
finally fire her guns at an enemy. As the flagship of Admiral Kurita’s First Diversionary Striking Force,
Yamato
fought the U.S. fleet at the Battle of Leyte Gulf. Although Kurita’s warships were able to ambush the ships of the Taffy Fleet, sinking the escort carrier
Gambier Bay
and three destroyers,
Yamato
missed most of the glory. Dodging a torpedo, her captain steered her
away
from the thick of the battle. By the time he reversed course, Admiral Kurita had ordered a withdrawal.

Passing back into the Sibuyan Sea,
Yamato
received another chance to fire her guns into the sky when she came under attack from U.S. carrier planes. Again her luck held. She made it back to Kure, damaged but intact.

The “decisive battle” that Japanese admirals rhapsodized about—the mythical great clash between Japanese and American surface fleets that would send the enemy reeling in defeat—was a faded dream. The Imperial Japanese Navy no longer had a fleet. Its handful of surviving ships spent most of their energy darting around the Inland Sea, the long passage between Honshu and Shikoku, hiding from American bombers.

Yamato
had become a ship without a mission. Now, finally, the great battleship had received her call to arms.

E
ns. Mitsuru Yoshida took a last look up and down Pier 1 at the Kure naval port. As the officer in charge of the last boat to shore, it was his job to make sure no sailors from
Yamato
were left ashore. Missing the sailing of a warship was an offense punishable by death.

As Yoshida expected, there were no stragglers. By now all
Yamato
’s crewmen were surely on board. Yoshida stood for another long moment on the pier gazing around. Kure had been his home since he arrived three months earlier as the new assistant radar officer. The streets of the naval port were eerily quiet this morning, as if everyone was still asleep. In the pale morning light, the surface of the harbor was a slate gray. Yoshida felt a pang of homesickness. He had the feeling that this might be the last time he would ever stand on his native land.

The twenty-two-year-old officer stepped back into the motor launch and ordered the coxswain to return to their ship. As they sliced back across the slick water, Yoshida was struck once again by the sight of the great vessel moored at Buoy 26. The silver-white hull of
Yamato
dominated the harbor. Passing the cruiser
Yahagi
, moored next to
Yamato
, Yoshida could see blinker flashes being exchanged between the ships. Newly graduated from officer candidate school only three months ago, Yoshida could read the signals: “
Preparations for getting under way completed.”

At 1500 that afternoon, March 29, 1945,
Yamato
eased away
from her mooring. Yoshida was at his duty station on the bridge, an officer of the most junior rank in the midst of captains and admirals. Turning westward, the battleship followed the southern shoreline of Honshu, past the port of Hiroshima.

Along the way,
Yamato
’s skipper, Rear Adm. Kosaku Ariga, ordered drills for the crew. While the ship turned and circled, the crew practiced antiaircraft and antiship exercises.

That evening, after they’d dropped anchor at the Mitajiri anchorage, near Ube on the narrow gulf separating Honshu from Kyushu, Captain Ariga assembled his crew of three thousand men. A stillness settled over the men on the deck as Ariga made his announcement:
Yamato
would be the mainstay of a task force sailing to counter the expected American landings on Okinawa. He hoped that they would rise to the occasion and live up to the expectations of the navy.

For a moment the only sound on deck was the collective breathing of the men. Ariga’s announcement came as no real surprise. Everyone knew what was happening at Okinawa. For the past week they’d heard the rumors:
Yamato
would soon be going into action. Now it was official.

Then the cheering began. Like all Japanese fighting men, they had been demoralized by the steady drumbeat of bad news—the Philippines, Saipan, Iwo Jima, now Okinawa. The pent-up frustration and anger came spilling out of them. The sailors yelled and laughed and applauded. Finally they were going to teach the Americans a lesson. The big guns of the
Yamato
were going to blow the enemy to hell.

The truth still hadn’t sunk in. The captain had stopped short of actually saying that they were going on a suicide mission. Seconds later, the voice of the executive officer, Capt. Jiro Nomura, cleared up any doubt. “The time has come,” he said. “Kamikaze
Yamato
, be truly a divine wind!”

That night Yoshida lay in his bunk reading a biography of the philosopher Spinoza. It was a rare moment. Between standing
watches, exercising his division of sixteen men, and performing endless antiaircraft and damage control drills, there had been little time for the pleasure of reading.

In his brief time aboard
Yamato
, Yoshida had learned that his fellow junior officers fell into two categories. There were the professionals, most of whom came from the Eta Jima naval academy, and there were those like Yoshida, who had been plucked from civilian life and rushed through officer candidate school. Most of the academy graduates were hard-liners who embraced the samurai ethos. They loudly proclaimed their willingness to die for the emperor, and they heaped scorn on anyone who suggested that suicide was a senseless tactic.

Most of the recently commissioned officers were of a different mind-set. Like Yoshida, they were university students whose lives had been interrupted by military service. Most had no use for the
bushido
nonsense of the hard-liners, but they had the sense to shut up about it. To Yoshida, there was a difference between being willing to die in the line of duty and throwing yourself at the enemy in a suicidal charge. He hadn’t volunteered to die.

It no longer mattered. Yoshida was a loyal son of Japan. His fate was bound with that of
Yamato
.

13
GIMLET EYES AND THE ALLIGATOR

OKINAWA SHOTO
MARCH 26, 1945

F
rom the bridge of his flagship, the cruiser
Indianapolis
, Adm. Raymond Spruance had a panoramic view of the amphibious force. The ships looked like brooding whales, one gray shape after another, stretching from horizon to horizon. On the opposite side of Okinawa were the flattops and escort ships of Mitscher’s Task Force 58. Together they constituted an armada of more than thirteen hundred ships.

The man whom destiny had placed in command of this force was not a charismatic figure in the mold of Horatio Nelson, John Paul Jones, or even Bull Halsey. Raymond Ames Spruance, in fact, was the reverse image of the flamboyant Halsey, possessing none of Halsey’s ebullient temperament or flair for self-promotion. Though he and Halsey were fast friends, Spruance worried about the effect an adoring press had on a senior commander. “
His fame may not have gone to his head,” Spruance wrote, “but there is nevertheless danger in this. Should he get to identifying himself with the figure as publicized, he may subconsciously start thinking in terms of what this reputation calls for, rather than of how best to meet the action problem confronting him.”

By personality and style, Spruance was a cautious commander. Halsey, who had been criticized for the opposite tendency, alluded to this when he wrote, “
I wish that Spruance had been with Mitscher at Leyte Gulf, and I had been with Mitscher in the Battle of the Philippine Sea.” Coming from Halsey, it was both a rueful comment on his own actions at Leyte Gulf and an implicit criticism of Spruance at the Philippine Sea. The aggressive Halsey was
undoubtedly thinking that he would have pursued and destroyed the Japanese carriers at the Philippine Sea, and the Leyte Gulf battle never would have been fought.

Spruance’s lean face had a sober, calculating expression, with darting eyes that always seemed to be absorbing new information. “Gimlet Eyes” was a nickname staff officers gave him, but never to his face. The mild-mannered Spruance never indulged in the profane, tough talk of admirals such as Kelly Turner or John “Slew” McCain. His only noticeable vice was a passion for exotic coffees, which he was able to indulge as his forces seized one coffee-growing island after another in the Pacific.

No one, including his bosses Chester Nimitz or Ernest King, doubted Spruance’s brilliance. Spruance himself never took credit for being bright, claiming that he was actually just a good judge of men. “
I am lazy,” he wrote, “and I never have done things myself that I could get someone to do for me.” It was Spruance’s style to choose bright officers for his staff, then get out of their way.

On the gray morning of March 31, 1945, as Spruance’s fleet was preparing to invade Okinawa, a warning was flashed from the CIC of Spruance’s flagship,
Indianapolis:
four bogeys were inbound. In the next few minutes, CAP fighters splashed two of the enemy planes. A third was shot down by gunners on the cruiser
New Mexico
.

The fourth somehow slithered through the screen. Dodging the combined gunfire of the task force’s heavy ships and their screens, the kamikaze crashed into
Indianapolis
’s port quarter.

The kamikaze plane itself did little damage. The starboard wing clipped the cruiser’s port bulwark, and most of the wreckage plunged into the water. Its bomb, released just prior to impact, smashed through several decks, including two messing and berthing compartments, before exploding in an oil bunker. Nine men were killed and twenty wounded.