According to the plan, Yamato, light cruiser Yahagi, and eight destroyers would form a “Surface Special Attack Force” (the term “special attack” was understood to mean suicide) and sortie on 6 April 1945. Vice Admiral Ito initially objected to the mission, viewing it as futile and wasteful. On 29 March, Yamato was ordered to take on fuel and ammunition, and loaded 1,170 shells for her nine 18.1-inch guns (in three triple turrets), 1,629 shells for her six 6.1-inch guns (in two triple turrets), 13,500 anti-aircraft shells, and 11.5 million rounds of machine-gun ammunition. The mission was given to Vice Admiral Seiichi Ito, commander of the Japanese Second Fleet (pretty much all that was left of the Combined Fleet), embarked on the super-battleship Yamato. The commander in chief of the Combined Fleet, Admiral Soemu Toyoda, resolved to send what was left of his force out in a blaze of glory. The debate up to that point was whether to keep the fleet in home waters as a last-ditch defense or to send it on what everyone knew would be a one-way mission to attack the overwhelming U.S. By this time, there wasn’t much left of the Japanese navy that was still operational, and fuel was in critically short supply. This was taken by senior Japanese navy leaders as implicit criticism of their service’s inaction. He asked what the Japanese navy was doing. Yamato was essentially doomed by a question from Emperor Hirohito during a briefing on 29 March about plans for Japanese air opposition to expected landings on Okinawa. landings on Okinawa commenced 1 April 1945, but carrier strikes and shore bombardment began a week earlier and the landings on the small islands of the Kerama-shōtto group just southwest of Okinawa occurred on 27 March.) invasion of the island of Okinawa, which Japanese intelligence correctly determined would occur at the end of March 1945. Operation Ten-ichi-go was the Imperial Japanese Navy’s plan to react to the U.S. Over the next days, additional messages were intercepted and decrypted by Fleet Radio Unit Pacific (FRUPAC) and also OP-20-G in Washington that provided increasingly detailed information on the operation’s timing and made specific mention of Yamato on 5 April.

The execute order for Operation Ten-ichi-go (“Heaven Number One”) was intercepted on 26 March 1945 and decrypted. Fifth Fleet, knew what the battleship Yamato’s mission was before almost anyone on Yamato did. Navy commanders in the Pacific, including Admiral Raymond Spruance, Commander U.S.

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