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This remarkable photo, taken a fraction of a second after the last one, appears to show the exact moment when the third and/or fourth bombs strike aft of the funnel and main mast. These would prove the deadliest of many bomb hits to come. The bombs slice in at an angle in the narrow opening between the rear fire control director and the rear 6" secondary turret, wiping out two machine gun mounts and their crews on their way down, slicing into the radar control room and exploding there.

The radar room and all inside it are wiped out; the force of the blast also knocks out the rear fire control director and sets off a secondary explosion in the aft 6" secondary turret, which destroys it and starts a fire that is never extinguished.

Seconds after this photo is taken, Yoshida arrives at the radar room:

"It is as if someone had taken an ax and split a bamboo tube. The bomb, a direct hit, must have sliced its way in at an angle and then exploded.

Tuned and retuned in preparation for today's defensive battle, the instruments have been scattered in all directions...I notice a chunk of flesh smashed into a panel of the broken bulkhead, a red barrel of flesh about as big around as two arms can reach.

It must be a torso from which all extremities - arms, legs, head - have been ripped off.

Noticing four hunks nearby, I pick them up and set them in front of me.

To the charred flesh are stuck here and there pieces of khaki-colored material, apparently scraps of military uniform. The smell of fat is heavy in the air.

It goes without saying that I cannot tell where head and arms and legs might have been attached.

That it should be impossible to tell one corpse from another!

As I lift them, they are still hot from burning; when I run my hand over them, they feel like the bark of a rough tree.

My fellow officers and men who were alive and at work here until a few minutes ago, and these hunks of flesh: one and the same, separated only by time!

How can I believe that?

The lives lodged in these four bodies - where have they gone?

The other eight men have been completely blown away; not even the stench of their deaths is left to float in the air.

What emptiness!

How did they die, those beings who only a moment ago were so real?

I cannot stop doubting, stop marveling.

It is not grief and resentment. It is not fear. It is total disbelief. As I touch these hunks of flesh, for a moment I am completely lost in thought."

Yoshida Mitsuru, "Requiem for Battleship Yamato"