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. This sensitive translation by Richard Minear is totally faithful to Yoshida's original prose, its language vigorous and idiomatic yet poetic in nature. An informative introduction puts the work in historical and political context and discusses Yoshida's postwar search for the meaning of peace.