A Glorious Way to Die

A Glorious Way to Die

First United States edition
Author	Russell Spurr
Language	English
Subject	World War II, Pacific campaign, Operation Ten-Go
Genres	Non-fiction, military history
Publisher	Newmarket Press
Publication date	1981
Publication place	United States
Media type	print (hardback)
Pages	341 (first edition)
ISBN	0-937858-00-5
OCLC	7577619
Dewey Decimal	940.54/5952
LC Class	D777.5.Y33 S68

A Glorious Way to Die: The Kamikaze Mission of the Battleship Yamato, April 1945 is a 1981 military history book by Russell Spurr about the suicide mission of the Japanese battleship Yamato against the American Pacific Fleet during the Battle of Okinawa near the end of World War II. Yamato was the largest battleship in the world, and Japan sacrificed her in a final, desperate attempt to halt the Allied advance on the Japanese archipelago. The book was published in 1981 in the United States by Newmarket Press,^[1] and in the United Kingdom by Sidgwick & Jackson.^[2]

Spurr, a British journalist and editor of the Hong Kong–based Far Eastern Economic Review, interviewed Japanese and Americans involved with Yamato's last mission, and drew on Japanese naval documents and records to write the book. He tells the story from both the Japanese and American points of view.

A Glorious Way to Die was generally well received by critics and historians. American author and journalist Charles Kaiser wrote in The New York Times that the book's strength is "its ability to re-create the fear the Japanese engendered with their desperation tactics", which resulted in American perception that they were all prepared to fight to the death.^[3] A reviewer in the Canadian journal Pacific Affairs commended Spurr's "well-balanced treatment of historical evidence and his workmanship in reconstructing the tragic event", and said that the book "deserves wide reading".^[4]