Speaking of the Japanese Navy's "Yamato-class" battleships in World War II, in addition to its 460 mm "super naval guns", the most talked about is the luxurious living conditions on its ships. Both accommodation and food are comparable to five-star hotels in Japan, so becoming a member of the Yamato-class battleships has become the dream of ordinary naval officers and soldiers.
So what is the real situation of life on the ship of the "Yamato-class" battleship known as the "Mobile Hotel at Sea", today's article will take you back to the fiery Second World War and see the luxurious life of this super ship.
As the iconic flagship of the Japanese Navy, it is difficult to become a sailor or soldier of the Yamato-class battleships. Taking the most representative first ship "Yamato" as an example, the ship has a total crew of 2500 people, and like the Japanese naval ships of the same period, the "Yamato" is also divided into eight sections such as artillery, navigation, communications, and internal affairs, and each section has subordinate detachments and squads, and the number of people is adjusted according to different contents. Before the reorganization, the Yamato class was expected to have 20 detachments, and a total of 22 detachments aboard the Yamato, which would eventually become a ship.
As the supreme commander of the ship, the captain of the Yamato was generally an officer of the Rank of Daisa. In the event of a battle, the captain must direct the soldiers to fight on the day battleship bridge or the night battleship bridge, while the deputy captain must assist the captain in the command room to do the battle command work and be responsible for the defense of the ship. In terms of weapon operation, the Artillery Section is the combat core of the entire ship, and in actual combat, the main turrets of the first to third are controlled by the soldiers of the 1st to 3rd units of the Artillery Section, and each turret is equipped with operators with different responsibilities such as turret commanders, artillery operators, and ammunition depot operators. The secondary guns on board were managed by the deputy gunnery commander, the anti-aircraft guns were managed by the anti-aircraft artillery commander, the front and rear auxiliary turrets were operated by the soldiers of the 4th and 10th squadrons, respectively, and the anti-aircraft guns and cannons were divided into the 5th and 6th and 7th and 8th divisions.
In other positions of the Yamato, there is also a very clear division of responsibilities. In 1945, for example, The 12th Detachment was responsible for communications on board; The 13th Detachment was responsible for the navigation of ships; The 17th Detachment was responsible for ship maintenance, fire safety, etc.; and there were subordinate detachments responsible for work, motor operation, machinery and boilers. The Comptroller's Section, which is the most important department for the daily supply, disbursement of expenses and daily life management of the entire crew, is managed by the members of The 22nd Unit.
When a new recruit is put on board, everyone receives four to five days of intensive training to learn the rules of the ship and become familiar with the location of the various departments on board. On the last day of training, at 8:00 a.m., all recruits were assembled on the top deck and assessed by the soldiers' units, and in order to prevent collusion and cheating, the topics were very different topics, which varied from person to person. The method of assessment is to find the location of a series of ship departments listed above on their own, and after finding it, let the cabin personnel stamp it to be qualified, and the soldiers who collect all the seals on the examination paper will be judged to be excellent. This assessment method, called "in-ship travel", can fully enable recruits to quickly and accurately understand the structure of the "Yamato Ship", so that they can better fit in with their posts in the future. In order to take care of some recruits with poor sense of road and lack of talent, the Yamato's minimum requirement for soldiers was to be able to find the residential area of the squadron from the uppermost deck.
When warships are moored in ports or at station, yamato will allow soldiers to take turns ashore for a holiday. All sailors who came ashore were given a wooden plaque called "Shangluza", with the name of the ship on the front and the personal information of the soldier on the back. Sailors who have served for more than three years are also distinguished from others by the inscription "Shan Yi" on the upper land. After returning to the ship, the "landing" can be returned to the ship.
In order to ensure that the crew has enough morale and energy to cope with various emergencies, a sumptuous meal is definitely a "panacea", and such a wish can be truly realized on the "Yamato".
At that time, the Japanese Navy destroyers and above had a cooking room responsible for officers' meals and soldiers' diets, but the Yamato side was more detailed, with a special cooking room for commanders and captains, and a cooking room for non-commissioned officers, quasi-non-commissioned officers and soldiers. As a huge warship that can accommodate 2,500 soldiers, cooking three meals a day for so many people is undoubtedly a very heavy task. Therefore, each cooking room on the ship was equipped with special food cold storage, cooking stations, cooking stations, food pantries, and food warmers that were extremely rare at that time. Take the soldiers' cooking room, for example, which has six rice cookers with a volume of 110 liters, two vegetable pots of the same size, a 36 liter porridge pot, two 15 kilowatts of rice cookers, two giant mixers, as well as rice washing machines, tableware sterilizers and other equipment.
There was an oven in the cooking room, and soldiers could bake their own bread, fruits and puddings if they were hungry. In addition, the ship can also make a variety of small snacks and desserts, as well as make their own refreshing drinks such as lemonade, and use the freezer to make ice cream in the middle of summer. Such extravagant equipment is unparalleled among Japanese naval vessels.
The soldier's food is still so abundant, the officer's food is even more imaginable. Officers' breakfast is generally based on Japanese breakfast; those who want to eat Western food can notify the guards the night before. The officers' lunch is a full set of Western-style meals. Meals must be served with Western etiquette and dress neatly and generously. The commander-in-chief of the combined fleet dines in his room or in the commander's dining room, and there are servicemen on the side; officers eat in officers' rooms and grass-roots officers' rooms according to the level of their duties, and when they encounter exercises or combat tasks, the servicemen take an elevator to deliver meals to each combat post.
The officer's dinner is Japanese and includes sashimi, grilled fish, steamed eggs, pickled vegetables, miso soup, etc. When warships are moored in different places, there will be local dishes and specialties such as lobster, tuna, snapper and so on. In terms of drinks, the Yamato ship is also equipped with the famous sake in Japan, as well as imported foreign sake such as "Zuni Waka".
In order to ensure that the food of soldiers and officers is fresh, the Yamato is specially equipped with a huge cold storage equivalent to the volume of 560 household refrigerators. Fresh meat, vegetables and dairy products and other short-term food will be stored in cold storage, and the temperature will change at any time with the food situation, generally between minus 2 degrees and above zero 5 degrees; dry goods and seasonings and other non-perishable materials are stored in more than forty food warehouses on the upper and middle decks, respectively.
In the evening, some hungry soldiers and officers could also go to the deck commissary to buy some food for supper, usually providing bread, pancakes, snacks, as well as milk candy, yokan soup and other foods. There are also cigarettes, stationery, tissue, matches and other daily necessities. However, in order to ensure strict military discipline, when the soldiers have procurement needs, they are registered by the squad leader, and then handed over to the commissary the next morning, and the responsible personnel will pack the goods into a wooden box with the name of the squad written on the order, and from 5:30 to 6 p.m. at night, the squads will send people to the commissary to retrieve and distribute them uniformly.
In order to ensure that the soldiers on the "Yamato Ship" have a good living environment, the Navy can be said to have made great efforts. In terms of temperature, each living and working area has a constant temperature, using the remaining power of the ammunition magazine cooler to provide air conditioning wind power in summer and steam heaters to provide heating in winter. Temperatures vary from 10-40 degrees celsius to between 10-40 degrees, depending on the cabin.
Although the Yamato could carry 509 tons of fresh water, the amount of fresh water available for washing was limited in addition to the power plant and drinking water. Therefore, officers and soldiers can only use hot seawater if they want to bathe, from officers to soldiers, and then rinse them with fresh water after washing. With the exception of the commander,office, chief of staff, and captain having their own own bathrooms, the remaining officers could only share one of the officers' bathrooms. There are two bathrooms for soldiers on the ship, and the sailors take a bath every three days, and the number of people bathing each time is fifty. Soldiers clean their bodies with fresh water and seawater in turn. If the weather forecast says that there is rain on the day, the whole staff is notified to concentrate on the top deck and take a bath using the rainwater. At the same time, all the facilities on the ship were used to accumulate rainwater for fire fighting and washing water.
In addition, the Yamato ship is also equipped with living facilities such as a post office and a laundry room, which can basically fully meet the daily needs of sailors. As one of the most important links, the accommodation of soldiers and officers is also a major feature of the Yamato ship, especially the officer's housing can be described as "luxury". In the case of the Captain's Suite, instead of the tradition of battleships at the stern of the ship in the past, it was located near the starboard center of the upper deck.
The entrance to the Chief's Suite is in the front of the conference room, which has a rectangular conference table with seven chairs on each side, and the two ends are the seats of the Chief of Staff and the Chief of Staff; there is a door leading to the office on the right rear of the Chief's Seat, which contains a set of tables and chairs, a set of small sofas and coffee tables, and a set of bookcases. The pantry next door is equipped with utensils such as tableware and tea sets used by the governor; the bedroom contains single beds, writing desks, couches and other items, the room is fully equipped, and the floor of the room is paved with silver-gray wool carpets, which makes the overall feeling very luxurious. Bathrooms and toilets can be reached via the bedroom through a small hallway.
The living area on the Yamato was much more spacious than other Japanese ships, and one-third of the soldiers had their own sleepers, which could reach 3.2 square meters per capita. The rest of the soldiers used hammocks, but there was plenty of room for themselves to sleep, and they were already very happy compared to the soldiers of other ships.
As an iconic ship of the Japanese Navy, the Yamato is perfect in humanizing its soldiers. However, in the actual battle, there was nothing that could be done, but on April 7, 1945, it was sent into the vast Pacific Ocean by Allied mines and bombs in the Battle of Cape Fangzhi, becoming the best "natural sanctuary" for many marine organisms. A generation of "Yamato ships" famous for the history of World War II withdrew from the stage of history with such a dismal ending.
Resources
1. "Demystifying the Story Behind yamato Inn"
2. List of Japanese Ships in World War II
3. The Unsinkable Yamato