The inhabitants of Earth secretly build a massive spaceship inside the ruins of the gigantic Japanese battleship "Japanese battleship Yamato" which lies exposed at the former bottom of the ocean location where she was sunk in World War II. This becomes the "Space Battleship Yamato" for which the story is titled. In the English "Star Blazers" dub, the ship is noted as being the historical "Yamato", but is then renamed the "Argo" (after the ship of Jason and the Argonauts).