WASHINGTON –
By Russell Spurr. Newmarket Press, New York. 1981. 368 pp. Ill.
Review By Caroline Tapp
While advancements in technology present opportunities for changes in strategy or tactics, tradition, personality and leadership shape creation and use of new technologies by navies. Four decades have passed since the publication of Russell Spurr’s “A Glorious Way to Die,” yet his account of the Japanese Imperial Navy’s battleship Yamato remains a worthy assessment of how cultural forces can shape technological use and doctrine.
When Spurr arrived in Japan in 1946 as a young lieutenant in the Royal Indian Navy, he first learned of the Japanese super-battleship Yamato from an English-speaking dry dock worker in its former homeport of Kure. Intrigued by the story of the battleship’s demise in 1945 during its attempt to defend Okinawa, Spurr returned to Japan in 1952 to research Yamato as a correspondent for the London Daily Express. He reviewed combat assessments, transcripts of interrogations and translations of official Japanese war records. He also conducted interviews with former ensigns from Yamato, who provided intimate details on the final mission. While Spurr suggests the rise of Naval Aviation rendered Yamato obsolete, he spends most of the text offering “insight into the agonizing dilemma of a misguided, courageous people [Japanese] who persisted in continuing a hopeless war” (7). American airpower might have been the immediate cause for Yamato’s sinking, but cultural tradition led the Japanese to build the largest battleship in the world and then send it on a self-avowed suicide mission. By sacrificing the pride of the Japanese Imperial Navy, Capt. Shiganori Kami believed that the planned suicide sortie would appeal to the divine, and if, nothing else, be a “glorious way to die” (97).
Broken into six parts, the book presents a compelling narrative style that effortlessly intertwines source material, though clear notes would better highlight Spurr’s intensive research efforts. The first half of the work sets the stage for the detailed storytelling of the fateful events of April 6 and 7, 1945. Bringing the reader into Kamikaze headquarters, U.S. Task Forces and the East China Sea, Spurr paints a picture of a woefully underprepared Japanese force culminating in Yamato’s transition to a kamikaze ship meant to disrupt U.S. plans at Okinawa. Yamato was reclassified as flagship to First Special Task Force and ordered to only carry fuel for the one-way suicide, or Tokko, mission. Japanese leadership had conflicted reactions to Operation Ten-Go (Heaven One), though Spurr suggests it was “fear of shame that [sent] Yamato off on a questionable mission” (125). Spurr’s gripping portrayal of Yamato’s storied demise offers a detailed analysis of how Japanese leaders decided its fate.
With his sometimes-reductionist consideration of cultural factors, Spurr has presaged more recent scholarship on the Japanese Navy. Instead of concentrating on a technical analysis of the relative merits of different platforms such as aircraft carriers or battleships, Spurr looked at how and why the Japanese built and used the technological marvel they did. More recent works, such as that of Jonathan Parshall and Anthony Tully on the Battle of Midway, also engage with the cultural perspective of the Japanese Imperial Navy and how it influenced doctrine and use of technology. Perhaps more important than establishing the dominance of new technologies, historical perspective reasserts the human element undergirding technologies of war. Spurr reminds readers to consider this perspective as he highlights the complex layers of cultural forces that facilitated the fate of Yamato.
Dr. Caroline Tapp is a historian for the Naval History and Heritage Command
