"Yamato's" story opens in the present day, where a young Japanese woman exhibits a great interest in the fate of the Battleship Yamato and her crew in the final days of World War 2. The audience later learns her foster father, Petty Officer Uchida, served on the ship, and she wants to know more about him and his ship-mates. She ultimately befriends an elderly fisherman named Kamio, who was one of Uchida's friends and served on that same ship as a cadet, and he agrees her to take her on his boat to the exact spot where the warship sunk in battle.

The movie then turns into a series of flashbacks, but similar to "Saving Private Ryan," there are many scenes that Kumio's character obviously did not witness or partake in, but they do serve to flesh out the personalities of the other key people.

Memories of the war are painful for Kamio, and until he met Uchida's adopted daughter and learned Uchida in fact was rescued, he never knew any of his close comrades survived and he spent 60 years of his life living with a degree of guilt.

However, by the end of the movie, he understands that having survived, to live life well and to the fullest, to cherish all its precious moments, means that those who died--those who were willing to pay the ultimate sacrifice--did not do so in vain, for through him and those of the next generation, the dreams and hopes of the departed also live on.