A Glorious Way to Die: The Kamikaze Mission of the Battleship Yamato

HIJMS Yamato was - and will now forever be, the largest Battleship ever built. It will also forever remain a supreme curiosity that Japan - the one country which had the foresight to recognise how air power and aircraft carriers were the sea-going naval might of the future, should insist on building 2 Yamato class Battleships when their construction almost bankrupted the nation to the extent that their building even deprived the country's fishermen of their nets. Nevertheless this magnificent vessel of death, doom and destruction went into service at a time when the Imperial Japanese Navy could do no wrong. Prior to WW2 Japan broke the terms of the peace treaties by preparing for their eventual complete domination of the Pacific region. The building of Truk Lagoon being one example. Then, in the aftermath of Pearl Harbour those plans were put into effect with devastating results. In June 1942, however, they failed to take Midway Atoll and from then on it was all downhill. Three years later, the largest Battleship ever to have been built was sent on a final mission from which she never returned. In "A Glorious Way to Die" Russell Spurr gives an account of this great ship from beginning to tragic end. It is a complete account - as befits one of the world's greatest ships. Perhaps the Yamato will prove to be the last great ship to be discovered by the great Bob Ballard. NM.

Other reviews have eloquently praised this wonderful book, so I'll restrict my remarks to related material.If this subject interest you, try Yoshida Mitsuru's book: "Requiem for the Battleship Yamato". This is a first-person account of Yamato's final mission, and is one of the greatest literary accomplishments of World War II.And to the reviewer who wanted Spielberg to make a movie of this story, please know that several films about the Yamato's final voyage have already been made in Japan. At least one film was made in the fifties, another version, "Rengo Kantai" (the Grand Fleet) was released in 1981, and a film called the "Battleship Yamato" was released a few years ago. None of these are available in the United States. Hopefully, someone will see fit to import at least one of the recent films (both reportedly lavish productions), as any of these would be preferable to a U.S. production.

I am trying to read all the books published that are written about, or contain material on, the Yamato-class "super-battleships" of the Imperial Japanese Navy. As I read this book, I felt like I was actually on the deck of the gigantic battleship as she was blown to her destruction.

This account certainly deserves five stars, no question about it. Spurr presents an excellent and very readable account of the last sailing of the Yamato on it's suicide mission to Okinawa. The author switches back and forth between the American side and the Japanese side, and, because of this, presents two sides of the same event. And, when reading both sides, the reader gets the impression that the author has done one heck of a job of research. The American characters, and especially the Japanese characters, come alive as real people, in real situations, in real action. Spurr has done an excellent job in both research and presentation; the book is exciting and hard to put down once you start reading. I was also impressed with the clarity of maps and diagrams, which, in most books of this period, are so small and blurry they are impossible to read. A great battleship. A great story.

I rather enjoyed this book. It gave me a sense of really being there. I wish that other books were written this way. I was astonished at how the author had studied and collected so much history from a time so long ago. I would recommend this book to anyone who enjoys studying WWII