Exactly as the title states. Captain Hara was in The Philippines at the start of the war, made the trip to Midway and completed multiple sorties making up part of the Tokyo Express.

He was then stationed in Japan heading torpedo boat training for a year, before gaining command of a cruiser that was sent on a one-way trip to oblivion with the Yamato in April of 1945.

Written a couple decades later, Hara is unsparing in his criticism of IJN leadership, including Yamamoto.

Happy to have stumbled across this one of a kind memoir. ( )

classic war memoir that was a best seller in both Japan and the United States during the 1960s. Originally published as a paperback in 1961, it has long been treasured by World War II buffs and professional historians for its insights into the Japanese side of the surface war in the Pacific. The book has been credited with correcting errors in U.S. accounts of various battles and with revealing details of high-level Imperial Japanese Navy strategy meetings. The author, Captain Tameichi Hara, was a survivor of more than one hundred sorties against the Allies and was known throughout Japan as the Unsinkable Captain.

Great book,
Highly recommend it. ( )

Well this one was different from the other Japanese books I've been reading. An historical biography dealing with some key naval events of WW2

This guy was a destroyer captain of great fame during the war. His stories are so gripping and at the same time so tragic when recounting the losses on either side. Honest in an almost clinical way and never shying away from painful truths.

And although so different from the other Japanese books, once again that whole idea of face and shame coming through as the underlying root of much bravery and many foolish mistakes. At times while reading this book I could feel the simple unrelenting force of these 2 abstract ideas being manifest in such tangible terms and with such a horrendous toll in human lives.

The meeting of these naval forces and the clash of the Japanese psyche and the American psyche being very much like old world meets new world, the sedate and the brash, the structured and the fluid, the honourable and expedient.

I was gripped to the very end, and what a candid telling of the end days and the "kamikaze madness' that filled those last tragic days. ( )