What would have happened if the atomic bomb test in the Nevada Desert in 1945 had been unsuccessful? How would the Western Allies continue the war against Japan? This is the central premise of Koppel's book, subtitled "A Novel of the Invasion of Japan".
The novel commences with a sudden storm just before the A-Bomb test causing the failure of the firing and the collapse of the gantry, leading to a postponement of the event for several months. From a strategic viewpoint what then ensues is based on real-life operational documents, some only declassified in the 1980s: the US Chief of Staffs' "Operation Olympic" (the invasion of Kyushu, the southern part of Japan) and "Operation Coronet" (the invasion of east-central Japan), and the Japanese "Ketsu-Go", their plan to bring about a decisive battle against the invaders. As is usual in the genre of alternative military history, Koppel wisely populates his book with men on the ground as well as the real-life characters of Truman and MacArthur, Hirohito and Tojo. Thus we see the probably outcome of this final conflict through the eyes of those involved directly.
Central to the story are the characters of Lieutenant Harry Seaver, the son of a US banker working in Japan before the war, and Colonel Kantaro Maeda, his former friend and classmate, whose sister was also attracted to Seaver. Fate has decided that Seaver's Ranger company should lead the spearhead along a road that Seaver knows well: it is the road running past the old Maeda villa where the Maeda daughter Katsuro has decided to wait for the outcome of the war. By a bitter irony, Kantaro has also been placed there with a battalion of Imperial Guardsmen to delay the US advance. To further muddy the picture, Seaver's second lieutenant is a Japanese-American, Jim Tanaka, who admires his father who left Japan, feels he would have had no place in Japan other than as a levée, and who comes to hate everything represented by the multi-layered society he encounters as an invader, as opposed to the dynamic levelling of differences between classes and groups in America. As Tanaka's loathing for mainland Japanese society increases with the march, so Seaver finds himself drawn back into the mentality of those Japanese he grew up with, leading to a consummation when he encounters Kantaro and Katsuro Maeda.
Other characters in the story also serve to portray the character of the fictional events being portrayed and also that of the two warring societies (three, if one includes the British contingent). The brutalising effect of war on some men is shown in the American flier Richard Connelly, a man who rejoices in killing Japanese, and in the Japanese lieutenant Matyura whose belligerence and brutality (towards his own men as well as the enemy) grows in proportion to Japan's decline. Some figures are tragic: Leading Seaman Albert Cummins, the only survivor of HMS Ramsey after a suicide boat attack, who is killed after a kamikaze hit on his hospital ship, and Corporal Noguchi, taken prisoner by the Americans who cannot quite make the adjustment to the new realities of Japanese life, with fatal consequences. The war itself is shown as a series of often tragic accidents and coincidences: a gung-ho US general is killed by US bombs after calling down B-29s near his own position, while a kamikaze flier is on intercept course to attack the Enola Gay and her atomic load when his Zero runs out of fuel and plunges into the sea.
How realistic is it? Based on figures for casualties on both sides from Iwo Jima and Okinawa, plus on what seems to be a good knowledge of Japanese custom and literature, particularly concerning "The Way of the Warrior", it is hard to doubt Coppel's interpretation of events as they might have happened. The scenes where civilians, even children, throw themselves against US Marines are harrowing, but it must be remembered that ordinary Japanese were being taught to do just this before the real-life atomic bombings ended the war. Although the coercive tactics of the Kempitai (Japanese secret police) obviously played a part, Coppel asserts that in the end it was the conditioning and thinking of the ordinary Japanese that made this possible, although he also portrays some Japanese as being less than eager to end their lives in suicide attacks. Interestingly these latter (admittedly only a few in the book) are military men, presumably with a knowledge or at least shrewd estimation that death is not quite the beauty traditionally portrayed to them. However, Coppel is never less than fair when discussing Japanese fighting men or Japanese society, so much so that the reader can begin to understand, if not condone, the Japanese way of looking at things during this conflict. While discussing realism it is worth noting that the author also paints the historic personae quite accurately: Tojo, a man determined to fight to the death with other people's lives but whose physical courage was not the same when it came to seppuku (in real life he failed his own suicide attempt and was later hung): Hirohito, polite but increasingly angry at the military's, and particularly Tojo's, conduct of the disastrous war: MacArthur, militarily brilliant but vain, arrogant and ambitious, yet with a fatal streak of naiveté: and Truman, former Missouri haberdasher become US President, not a great statesman even in his own eyes but an able political operator.
Apart from Norman Mailer's The Naked and the Dead I cannot think of any other novels, let alone alternative history, that deal with the Pacific War of 1933-45. Burning Mountain is a thick tome of some 400+ pages, but is very readable and never dull. If you have ever wondered whether the atomic bomb should have been dropped on Japan in 1945, this book may make you think again.
Back to Alternative History | Back to Books | Back to Culture | Back to Home Page