Since the subject of my epic Axis&Allies campaigns at OLMC has been broached, perhaps I can give a few comments on this topic, which will shed some more revelation into my background, and my eccentricities.  :P  The Yamato, for the uninitiated, was a Japanese Battleship, the largest battleship, the most technologically advanced battleship afloat in 1941.  It's 18.1 inch guns were almost twice as powerful as anything the Allies had, and the only other battleship that might be able to engage it in one-on-one combat was the mighty Bismarck of the German fleet.  (It was actually designed to carry 24.5 inch guns but Admiral Yamamoto said that was ridiculous, because radar at that time was so limited that guns with a range of over 70 miles would be firing at a target over the horizon they could not even see.)  The ship was the flagship of Yamamoto until sometime in 1942, when he transferred his flag to its sister ship Mushashi.  [Which was ironic because Yamamoto thought battleships were antiquated.  He won the campaign to have the third ship in the series, Shinano, converted into an aircraft carrier.  (More on that later.)]

I first became acquainted with Yamato when it appeared in a box at Allied Hobbies (my favorite weapons depot at the time) in a massive 1:350 scale, at the massive price of $18.99.  (For a battleship model, 1:350 is massive.  Typical is a 1:800 scale)  ($18,99 was a lot of money in 1973.  This was back in the days when a gallon of milk was $ .20 and $10,000 was an insane price to pay for a car.  Even a Cadillac wasn't that expensive.)  It took me a month of paper route money to purchase it and another month assembling the 1400 or so parts into the pride and joy of the "Burlington Navy".  (I got many a lecture from ma over how much money I sunk into the Pacific Fleet and my air force of WW2 fighters and bombers.)  :)

The Yamato never saw much action during the war.  It met its demise January 1945, when it was launched by the Japanese High command on a ѕυιcιdє mission.  It was supposed to beach itself of the Philippines and support Japanese operations there with its big guns.  The 2000 or so sailors on board fought hard and bravely, downing almost 100 US planes.  (I think three Catholics were represented aboard the Yamato, but not sure.)  At any rate, the official story is a bunch of horse manure for the following reasons:

1) We know now from Operation Magic that the US knew the intentions of the Japanese High Command and the location of every significant component of the Imperial Japanese Navy.  Evidence of this is the sinking of the Shinano November 1944, by the US submarine Archerfish, deep inside Japanese waters.  (It is curious that the Shinano had exactly the same hull as Yamato, and while Yamato brushed off over 20 direct torpedo hits, Shinano was sunk by a salvo of four.  The US navy said Shinano had "serious design flaws".  Sure, and Oswald shot JFK...).  The US could have dispatched subs the minute Yamato left air cover and disabled it, sparing both Japanese and American lives.

2) Yamato main guns were loaded with "Beehive shells" fused to explode one second after firing—a mere 1,000 m (3,300 ft) from the ship.  All evidence suggests these were the only shells in the magazines.  This meant that if the Japanese actually succeeded in beaching Yamato in a battlezone the ship would be useless.  It appears as though both the Japanese and Americans had arranged for this event to be a "beta test" to see whether or not a battleship could withstand a concerted air attack, and Japanese sailors and American airmen were needlessly sacrificed on the high altar of the military/industrial complex in a slaughter that is the epitome of the dog and pony show that was WW2.

Yamato was moreover a symbol of the Japanese nation, much as the statue of Liberty is the United States.  In the '70's a Japanese anime series was produced called "Space Battleship Yamato", which in the US was known as "Star Blazers", minus all politically incorrect scenes (such as the US mercilessly bombing the hapless ship even after it was disabled) and the ship renamed the "Argo".  But several of the stanzas from the stirring theme song of the series should reverberate with Traditional Catholics:

Danger lurking everywhere.
But we know we have to dare.
Evil men with evil schemes...
They can't destroy all our dreams...

We must be strong and brave...
Our homes we've got to save..
We must make the fighting seas
So Mother Earth (Church) can be at peace...

Through all the fire and the smoke,
We will never give up hope.
If we can win the Earth will survive...
We'll keep peace alive... Yamato.

That is the same spirit we should have defending Faith and Tradition...

Our Lady of Fatima, pray for us, you are our only hope.