Death is Lighter than a Feather
by David Westheimer
University of North Texas Press, 1995, Originally published in 1971, 388 pages
If the U.S. had not dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the
Allies had plans to invade the Japanese home islands. The first step, Operation
Olympic, would have been the seizure of the southern part of Japan's southernmost main island of
Kyūshū (most of Miyazaki and Kagoshima Prefectures) before the second step,
Operation Coronet, would have involved the landing of troops to gain control of the area around Tokyo.
The alternative history Death is Lighter than a Feather, originally
published as Lighter than a Feather in 1971, covers the period from the
Operation Olympic American landings on Kyūshū starting November 12, 1945, until
Japan's surrender on January 14, 1946. The title comes from the first precept of
the Imperial Rescript to Soldiers and Sailors, "Be resolved that duty is heavier
than a mountain, while death is lighter than a feather." David Westheimer's most
famous novel is Von Ryan's Express, published in 1964 and made into a
movie in 1965 starring Frank Sinatra and Trevor Howard.
Westheimer did extremely thorough research to write this novel with a high
level of accuracy and authenticity in culture, geography, and possible
historical events based on Allied invasion plans. After a long Prologue that
presents what happened between early August 1945, when the U.S. did not drop the
atomic bombs, and the start of the invasion of Kyūshū on November 12, each of
the novel's eighteen chapters has a short story with characters on both the
American and Japanese sides. At the end of a chapter, the main character
generally but not always meets death. Most of the short stories are independent
from others and could be read separately, but together they connect effectively
to depict realistically what could have happened, including the confusion and
isolation of many of the combatants. The chapters are sequenced in roughly
chronological order. The dialog is convincing, although one chapter has a long
conversation between two concealed Japanese soldiers in the midst of a
battle, which seems to be impossible due to the noise and confusion around them.
The realistic characters on the Japanese and American sides make this book
exceptional. The author presents a wide variety of average people, some with
typical human weaknesses and some with quirks. Several chapters begin
with summaries of the overall status of the Kyūshū invasion. The book does not
deal at all with high-level leaders, but rather with regular people who are
fighting or often waiting apprehensively for the fighting to begin for them
personally. The Japanese side has few top-notch soldiers left after fighting the
war for so long, so several characters are women or older
men, fearful and starving, who have been forced to join the National Volunteer Combat Force. They
recognize the situation as hopeless, but almost all continue to battle the enemy
until death. The author supplies enough history and details about these
characters so that readers can relate to their feelings and understand their
actions.
The Japanese military in the novel deployed a wide variety of suicide weapons in special (suicide)
attacks against the invasion force. These included kamikaze aircraft, small
motorboats loaded with explosives at the bow, midget submarines, kaiten manned
torpedoes, and fukuryū (crouching dragons) who wore diving suits
and tried to destroy passing ships with explosive charges attached to long poles
that they carried while below the surface. These weapons employed together
caused great damage but failed to stop the overwhelming invasion force. The
kamikaze aircraft used in battle were mainly obsolete types and included
trainers that had been modified for suicide attacks. The planes were deployed to
small camouflaged airstrips in Kyūshū. The first two chapters include a story of a 12-man
kamikaze squadron that has four Shiragiku (white chrysanthemum) trainers, four new planes built specifically for special attacks with 500-kg bombs,
and four other older types.
One of the Shiragiku trainer pilots, named Hiroshi, succeeds in hitting a ship.
"His last emotion was terror" (p. 30). Before his final sortie, he had written an
insincere last letter to home (p. 27):
Kobayashi [name of small airstrip] was even more trying than Kanoya, for
at Kobayashi there was nothing to do but wait. And the waiting would only
end in death. Many of the kamikaze, Hiroshi among them, spent much of their
idle time writing and rewriting their last letters home. Hiroshi worked at
his until he was sure it expressed the thoughts expected of a true son of
Japan. It was not genuine but it would bring comfort and honor to his
father. He was determined his actions would not tarnish the false image it
created.
Chapters 3 and 4 present a kaiten human torpedo pilot who hits an American
transport. He went out on two prior missions but returned alive each time in
humiliation when his kaiten was not launched.
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