Originin of Yamato    

Yamato was the lead ship of the Yamato class of Imperial Japanese Navy World War II battleships. She and her sister ship, Musashi, were the heaviest battleships ever constructed, displacing 72,800 tonnes at full load and armed with nine 46 cm (18.1 inch) 45 Caliber Type 94 main guns, which were the largest guns ever mounted on a warship. Neither ship survived the war.

Named after the ancient Japanese Yamato Province, Yamato was designed to counter the numerically superior battleship fleet of the United States, Japan's main rival in the Pacific. She was laid down in 1937 and formally commissioned a week after the Pearl Harbor attack in late 1941. Throughout 1942, she served as the flagship of the Japanese Combined Fleet, and in June 1942, Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto directed the fleet from her bridge during the Battle of Midway. The only time Yamato fired her main guns at enemy surface targets was in October 1944, when she was sent to engage American forces invading the Philippines during the Battle of Leyte Gulf.

Yamato was sunk in 1945 by American carrier-based bombers and torpedo bombers with the loss of most of her crew when she was sent on a one-way mission to Okinawa to protect the island against the American advancing forces.