I have weird facinations. One is with WWII movies. I don't know why, as I'm not all, "Woo! Greatest war ever!" as I'm not particularly fond of war. Not to say we should have capitulated to the facist forces (for longer than we did, at any rate, which was for a really fricking long time, considering), but war bugs me. Still, WWII movies are the bee's knees. Even crappy ones.
Then I took a course on WWII through Japanese literature, pre-Pearl Harbor, during WWII, and during the occupation. I've read pieces that most Japanese don't even know were ever written. (The Japanese denial of much of what happened just before and during WWII is the subject of a long, exhausting essay for which I haven't the mental energy right now.)
So, when NOVA has a program about the famed Battleship Yamato, it's like ...well, not mental chocolate, but definitely crystal-methish.
Naturally, when you're dealing with the Pacific front, with the Japanese navy's successes shortly after Pearl Harbor, with the American aircraft carriers, with the freakin' Yamato, largest battleship ever created, you're going to get tons of superlatives. Still, "ships of unusual size" tickled me in a movie/book-geek-slash-WWII-geek mash-up.
Side Note
An interesting story which I vaguely remember getting some coverage nationally, about the grandson of an American WWII Navy vet returning the personal effects of a kamikaze pilot to his family. The last sentence, included in an article written a little over five months before the attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, is somewhat bittersweet a read.
Also of note is that the kamikaze volunteers were nearly all university students, "though science students were deemed too valuable to sacrifice."
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