Portal:Japan/Selected article/12
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Ten-gō sakusen (Kyūjitai: 天號作戰, Shinjitai: 天号作戦; "Operation Heaven One"), also known as Ten-ichi-go, was the last major Japanese naval operation in the Pacific Theater of World War II.
In April 1945, the Japanese battleship Yamato, the largest battleship in the world, along with nine other Japanese warships, embarked from Japan on a deliberate suicide attack upon Allied forces engaged in the Battle of Okinawa. The Japanese force was attacked, stopped, and almost completely destroyed by United States (U.S.) carrier-borne aircraft before reaching Okinawa. Yamato and five other Japanese warships were sunk.
The battle demonstrated U.S. air supremacy in the Pacific theater by this stage in the war and the vulnerability of surface ships without air cover to aerial attack. The battle also exhibited Japan's willingness to sacrifice large numbers of its people in desperate attempts to slow the Allied advance on the Japanese home islands.
