By SHINJIRO SADAMATSU/ Staff Writer
May 13, 2024 at 17:56 JST
USA, Oita Prefecture--The last moments of Japan’s mammoth battleship Yamato were captured in extremely rare color footage taken from U.S. military aircraft in World War II, a war-history group said.
The footage from U.S. archives of the pride of the Imperial Japanese Navy was released in Japan on May 12.
One film shows the battleship under U.S. attack on April 7, 1945, off Kagoshima Prefecture, according to Toyonokuni Usashijuku, a local group that analyzes and identifies U.S. war archival materials.
“From the weather conditions on record--with thick clouds hanging low--and the wide wake behind the ship, it is almost certain that it is the Yamato,” said Yusuke Orita from the group.
The clip was filmed from a U.S. military plane at around 12:40 p.m., less than two hours before the battleship sank.
Another piece of aerial footage shows the Yamato moving off the coast of Iwakuni, Yamaguchi Prefecture, while evading U.S. attacks on March 19 of the same year.
The group identified the ship as the Yamato based on its characteristic shape. The scene shown in the footage matches photos attached to a battle report stored in the National Diet Library in Tokyo, the group said.
The two pieces of footage, totaling 82 seconds, are part of 17 clips captured across 12 prefectures in Japan between February and August 1945. The running time for all 17 clips is 8 minutes and 28 seconds.
Since 2011, the group has been trying to determine dates, times and locations of footage obtained from the U.S. National Archives by cross-referencing them with U.S. military war reports and Japanese records.
The group releases footage to the public once a year or so.
“It is a rare color movie, and the ship is highly possibly the Yamato,” said Kazushige Todaka, head of the Yamato Museum in Kure, Hiroshima Prefecture. “However, it is difficult to conclude so because it is a distant view.”
The footage will be on display on May 18 at Kyokakuji temple here, which is located along a 10-kilometer historic walk organized by the group for visits to war ruins.
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A scene from the footage showing the battleship Yamato under attack on April 7, 1945, off Kagoshima Prefecture (Provided by Toyonokuni Usashijuku)
