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Requiem for Battleship Yamato

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Requiem for Battleship Yamato

By: Yoshida Mitsuru, Richard Minear - translator
Narrated by: Graeme Malcolm
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About this listen

Requiem for Battleship Yamato is Yoshida Mitsuru's story of his own experience as a junior naval officer aboard the fabled Japanese battleship as it set out on a last, desperate sortie in April 1945. Yoshida was on the bridge during Yamato's fatal encounter with American airplanes, and his eloquent, moving account of that battle makes a singular contribution to the literature of the Pacific war. The book has long been considered a classic in both Japan and the United States. As with most great battle stories, its ultimate concern is less bombs and bullets than human nature, less death than life.

©1985 University of Washington Press (P)2014 Audible Inc. Americas Military United States War
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An interesting firsthand account, perhaps a little embellished in the writer's memory by the passage of time The narrator, however, was robotic, reading rather than telling the story.

Interesring and raw emotions

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This book is a fascinating and revealing first person account of the sinking
of the Japanese battleship Yamato in its ill conceived suicidal final
mission. There are few survivors of this sinking and so to find such a book
was of great interest to me.

The account is detailed and often harrowing in nature given the extent of
the carnage wrought upon the worlds most powerful battleship. The author writes in a rather introspective way and sometimes a rather poetic one too. Although short, this book provides the essence of what the final few hours were like aboard the mighty battleship. An insight into the mindset of the Japanese military man at that time shows the fatalistic acceptance of their one way mission that we in the west find difficult to understand. We also see just how wasteful the Japanese commanders were in how they threw men and other resources away in foolish missions such as Yamato's final one.

This book also illustrates how the battleship gave way as the primary capitol ship in the world's navies in favour of the aircraft carrier and air power at sea.

There seems so little material available from the few survivors of the Yamato sinking that this work is a valuable if brief glimpse into that final battle that it is a book I would recommend to any reader interested in the subject matter or in naval warfare as a whole.

The End of The Battleship

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Powerful first-hand account of serving aboard the Yamato and an interesting insight into the mindset of the Japanese sailors.

Powerful first-hand account

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