page_title: A Glorious Way to Die
section_title: Synopsis
hierarchical_section_title: A Glorious Way to Die / Synopsis
caption_attribution_description: English: Operation Ten-Go: Track-chart of Japanese "special attack force" composed of battleship Yamato, light cruiser Yahagi and eight destroyers during the "Last Sortie" to Okinawa in April 1945. Based on interrogation of japanese participants after the surrender of Japan. Čeština: Operace Ten-Gó: Trasa japonského „speciálního útočného svazu“ tvořeného bitevní lodí Jamato, lehkým křižníkem Jahagi a osmi torpédoborci během „poslední plavby“ k Okinawě v dubnu 1945. Založeno na výsleších japonských účastníků po japonské kapitulaci.
context_page_description: A Glorious Way to Die: The Kamikaze Mission of the Battleship Yamato, April 1945 is a 1981 military history book by Russell Spurr about the suicide mission of the Japanese battleship Yamato against the American Pacific Fleet during the Battle of Okinawa near the end of World War II. Yamato was the largest battleship in the world, and Japan sacrificed her in a final, desperate attempt to halt the Allied advance on the Japanese archipelago. The book was published in 1981 in the United States by Newmarket Press, and in the United Kingdom by Sidgwick & Jackson.
  Spurr, a British journalist and editor of the Hong Kong-based Far Eastern Economic Review, interviewed Japanese and Americans involved with Yamato's last mission, and drew on Japanese naval documents and records to write the book. He tells the story from both the Japanese and American points of view.
  A Glorious Way to Die was generally well received by critics and historians.
context_section_description: In A Glorious Way to Die, Russell Spurr recounts the final mission of Japanese battleship Yamato. He describes the events that led to the decision by the Japanese at Combined Fleet headquarters to send Yamato, the pride of the Imperial Japanese Navy, on a suicide mission against the American Pacific Fleet during the Battle of Okinawa near the end of World War II. Spurr tells the story of Yamato's last mission from both the Japanese and the American point of view, dramatised in a third-person narrative.
  Construction of Yamato began in secrecy at the Kure naval base in 1937. She was completed soon after the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in December 1941, but had already been rendered obsolete by the Japanese themselves after their successful carrier-based attacks at Pearl Harbor and elsewhere. Yamato, the largest battleship in the world, with nine 18.1-inch guns with a range of over 22 miles, became, in the words of a  Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reviewer, a "70,000-ton white elephant the Japanese did not quite know what to do with".
  In March 1945, after the Americans had invaded Okinawa and all but eliminated the Japanese Navy, a final kamikaze mission called Operation Ten-Go (Operation Heaven One) was conceived by Japanese commanders at Combined Fleet to repulse the Allied advance on the Japanese archipelago. The plan was to send Yamato with eight support destroyers and a cruiser to Okinawa. Yamato would only be given enough fuel to reach Okinawa, and would have no air cover as all available airplanes would be used for a series of kamikaze attacks on US aircraft carriers. At Okinawa Yamato and her support craft would beach themselves and assist the island defenders. Without air cover there was little chance of Yamato reaching her destination, but, according to American author and journalist Charles Kaiser, the Japanese high command were "perfectly prepared to sacrifice the remnants of [their] fleet to avoid the stigma of surrender".
  Not all Japanese naval officers agreed with Combined Fleet's decision to sacrifice Yamato, and while they had no choice but to comply, some committed one act of defiance by secretly supplying the battleship and the rest of her fleet with enough fuel to return home. Yamato set sail for Okinawa from the Kure naval base on March 29, 1945. On April 7, 1945, the Americans intercepted the Japanese fleet, 200 miles from Okinawa. Using 280 bombers and torpedo planes in three waves of attacks from nine aircraft carriers, they sank the battleship and five of her support ships within three hours. After Yamato went down, the Americans machine-gunned survivors in the water. Spurr explains the reason for their hatred of the Japanese:
  The Americans felt no compunction about slaughtering their helpless foes. They had always fought a blatantly racial war in the Pacific – and so had the Japanese. Headline-seeking brass hats openly declared that killing Japs was no worse than killing lice. Reports of Japan's atrocities against war prisoners and even the unnatural fanaticism of the Kamikaze combined to convince the Americans that these were inhuman freaks, deserving little mercy. The apogee of brutalization was to be reached, four months later, at Hiroshima.
  After the US planes left the area, the remaining Japanese support ships picked up what survivors they could from the water and returned to Kure. According to Spurr, of Yamato's total crew of 3332, only 269 survived. The Americans lost 12 men in their attack on the Japanese fleet.
caption: Track chart of Yamato's last sortie to Okinawa in April 1945
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