bucketfoot-al wrote:
Thanks! I just placed the order.
One side note that is perhaps of tangential relevance to the earlier discussion:
Without being able to read Japanese, it is really difficult for us on this side of the Pacific to fully evaluate the various books on the IJN, up to and including the exhibits at the Kure Maritime Museum.
It is true that they have been updating the Kure Yamato model, and it is especially gratifying to see that the new underwater discoveries have not only been widely accepted as accurate, but also that the myriad plastic models of these two battleships have increasingly incorporated the changes.
Vlad,
I believe from what I have seen over the years pertaining to Yamato, a majority of the documents and Japanese Naval records written in Japanese (Kanji) are very difficult to interpret into a simple form easy to understand for the rest of us. I have seen some of these Naval Records (I think are known as incident reports?) (I may be wrongs so please correct me) are written from what I am told in not only navel terms, but a form of ancient Japanese which is no longer taught. I know of no one who is familiar enough to translate these, so I have for now given up.
I will assume that the museum has someone that can read these to the point of understanding what they mean, but possible that so many documents are meaningless that it takes a great amount to time to get to the important ones. I haven't seen many digital photos of the last dives, but IMO they are relying on the photos from the dive rather trying to piece together the documents they have on file.
Skulski's new book looks promising and even added the Musashi dives. I look forward to getting mine in May.
What's needed is a Japanese Naval Historian in Japan to enlighten us all, but that's not going to happen.