Mitsuru Yoshida (吉田満 ''Yoshida Mitsuru'' January 6, 1923 – September 17, 1979) was a Japanese author and naval officer. He was born in

Tokyo Tokyo (; ja, 東京, , ), officially the Tokyo Metropolis ( ja, 東京都, label=none, ), is the capital and List of cities in Japan, largest city of Japan. Formerly known as Edo, its metropolitan area () is the most populous in the world, ...

. He was a survivor of the battleship ''Yamato'' when it was sunk on 7 April 1945 during

Operation Ten-Go , also known as Operation Heaven One (or Ten-ichi-gō 天一号), was the last major Japanese naval operation in the Pacific Theater of World War II. The resulting engagement is also known as the Battle of the East China Sea. In April 1945, t ...

, an attempt to support the defenders of

Okinawa is a prefecture of Japan. Okinawa Prefecture is the southernmost and westernmost prefecture of Japan, has a population of 1,457,162 (as of 2 February 2020) and a geographic area of 2,281 km2 (880 sq mi). Naha is the capital and largest city ...

. His best-known work is ''Senkan Yamato-no Saigo'' ( 戦艦大和ノ最期, Requiem for Battleship Yamato), based on his personal experiences as a junior officer on ''Yamatos final voyage. It was made into a movie ''Senkan Yamato'' ("Battleship ''Yamato''" Shin-Toho. Dir.:

Yutaka Abe was a Japanese film director and actor. He went to America along with a younger brother to visit an uncle living in Los Angeles. There he enrolled in an acting school, and upon hearing that Thomas H. Ince was looking for Japanese extras to work ...

) in 1953. Another movie, ''

Yamato was originally the area around today's Sakurai City in Nara Prefecture of Japan, which became Yamato Province and by extension a name for the whole of Japan. Yamato is also the dynastic name of the ruling Imperial House of Japan. Japanese his ...

'', was released in 2005.

Selected bibliography

*''Requiem for Battleship Yamato'' (''Senkan Yamato-no Saigo'' translated by Richard H. Minear)

References

Japanese writers 1923 births 1979 deaths Imperial Japanese Navy officers Japanese military personnel of World War II {{Japan-writer-stub