Corrupt Hotel

The furniture, perhaps. The cash, if the value is not blown up in the budgeting... I can think of several possibilities

- Officers going to hide the money in Okinawa when they entered port.
- Since it's clear Japan is not winning the war, they don't put things on tab anymore. They are paying the soldiers and supplies (from Okinawan locals) in cash, and this money have to be present.
- IJN don't have stockpile of supplies in Okinawa, so they have to buy it in cash. Japan is losing, so locals and sailors won't be as cooperative if IJN just force take the supplies or put it on tab.

Yahagi did say the money is officially to pay for salary and buy supplies.

Seika said:

The furniture, perhaps. The cash, if the value is not blown up in the budgeting... I can think of several possibilities

- Officers going to hide the money in Okinawa when they entered port.
- Since it's clear Japan is not winning the war, they don't put things on tab anymore. They are paying the soldiers and supplies (from Okinawan locals) in cash, and this money have to be present.
- IJN don't have stockpile of supplies in Okinawa, so they have to buy it in cash. Japan is losing, so locals and sailors won't be as cooperative if IJN just force take the supplies or put it on tab.

Yahagi did say the money is officially to pay for salary and buy supplies.

Note, the money was for salary and supplies, "after" Yamato arrived in Okinawa; which according to this, is during Operation Ten-go (different name here). They "paid" the Yamato crew, with the knowledge that the ship was essentially going on a suicide mission, and that the cash probably will never need to be reimbursed. Or they could probably be optimistic enough to believe Yamato can actually make it to Okinawa, and there will actually be supplies to "buy" on the now contested island.

It's more along the lines of:

Yamato sank with the (cash) salary of the men who died with the ship, which is now worth a billion yen. Since it was in her belly when she sank, it's kind of hers, now that she's resurfaced...

With that money, she's a billionaire (although that's only worth around $10 million USD) from that pay she "inherited" from her sailors.

MooCow21 said:

which according to this, is during Operation Ten-go (different name here).

AFAIK, Kikusui in WW2 usually refers to the kamikaze plane, especially from Okinawa.
The operation don't stop with the sinking of Yamato. There's Kikusui 1 to 10.

One billion yen and 3000 souls.

Steak said:

One billion yen and 3000 souls.

I can't take this.

MooCow21 said:

Note, the money was for salary and supplies, "after" Yamato arrived in Okinawa; which according to this, is during Operation Ten-go (different name here). They "paid" the Yamato crew, with the knowledge that the ship was essentially going on a suicide mission, and that the cash probably will never need to be reimbursed. Or they could probably be optimistic enough to believe Yamato can actually make it to Okinawa, and there will actually be supplies to "buy" on the now contested island.

I did some number crunching on what that money was really worth at the time. An officer cadet was paid only 670 yen a year, and a seaman would make less than half of that. It seems to me that Yamato went down with 6 months worth of salary for her entire crew of 3000 souls.

kinda remind me of "Swordfish" movie

panzerfan said:

I did some number crunching on what that money was really worth at the time. An officer cadet was paid only 670 yen a year, and a seaman would make less than half of that. It seems to me that Yamato went down with 6 months worth of salary for her entire crew of 3000 souls.

It's always amazing to see how much the worth of every single cent back then. Before the market starts conjuring up their own money from "the future"

Seika said:

It's always amazing to see how much the worth of every single cent back then. Before the market starts conjuring up their own money from "the future"

"Money" has always been an abstract concept devoid of tangible value. Even back when it was nominally linked to gold how did you determine what gold was worth in terms of dollar exactly? After all it's not like gold magically had some set value either, so basically some guys up top had to decide what gold was worth, and because it was worth Y the dollar was worth X... in other words it was still totally arbitrary and made up, just like all money in history is and always has been.

Really when you stop to starting thinking about it money is a really strange concept; it really doesn't exist, how much of it we 'have' is pretty much entirely a matter of what we ourselves have convinced ourselves we do, and it's supposed value per given unit is utterly arbitrary. It's not like money has really magically become less valuable over time, it's more fair to say we've just come to like bigger numbers for various mostly stupid and shallow reasons so we use those instead.

Tk3997 said:

Money is a trade medium that represents goods and services.

You can't carry around all the things you own all the time to barter with nor do you always have the exact thing someone else may want to trade them. So, an item that represents these things was decided on and used in their place.

Inflation happens because of way more reasons than I can list, but it's not because people like big numbers.

Hoobajoob said:

Money is a trade medium that represents goods and services.

You can't carry around all the things you own all the time to barter with nor do you always have the exact thing someone else may want to trade them. So, an item that represents these things was decided on and used in their place.

Inflation happens because of way more reasons than I can list, but it's not because people like big numbers.

None of that which really disputes my point that it's a very odd, almost quasi-religious concept at it's most basic level.

The fact is it doesn't actually exist in any tangible sense and the supposed value of any given amount of it is completely arbitrary and set entirely by what we've decided to convince ourselves into thinking it's worth. We can only 'loose' or 'gain' it because we all collectively decide to agree that change has occurred, even though in reality said changes amounts to absolutely nothing beyond adding or deleting zeros from a record. The fact we've built up an ever growing web of equally fictitious nonsense around it to try and 'explain' how this collective delusion works does not change those underlying facts, and inflation does happen for lots of reasons... that we've also entirely made up and decided as a group are 'true'.

Money is worth only what we all collectively decide it's worth because it's a completely intangible concept sustained entirely by an almost religious faith.

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I have two choices: believe in virtual goods for trading services and items then put faith in whatever inflation decides... or... live like a nomad hunting for my own food, fighting my way against the food chain and living without basic necessities (medicines included) I have to build myself. If bad living equals being poor instead of being eaten, I still prefer the first way.

There's also the communism route, but we all know that never worked at all.

I tried googling this Yamato money yen thing and found next to nothing...

Yahagi said:

510'805 Yen and 3 Sen

Why tack on the extra 3 sen?

Steak said:

One billion yen and 3000 souls.

What an expensive hotel indeed.

rom_collector said:

I have two choices: believe in virtual goods for trading services and items then put faith in whatever inflation decides... or... live like a nomad hunting for my own food, fighting my way against the food chain and living without basic necessities (medicines included) I have to build myself. If bad living equals being poor instead of being eaten, I still prefer the first way.

There's also the communism route, but we all know that never worked at all.

When has actual communism ever been put into practice instead of being used as a front for despotism?