Author of adventure/thriller and horror fiction

The Death of Battleship Yamato

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Yamato was one of two super battleships built by the Japanese in the years leading up to Japan’s war against the United States. She displaced nearly 73,000 tons in the water and fired nine 40-cm guns, the biggest guns ever put on a warship. She played little part in the war until the Battle of Leyte Gulf. The Japanese admiral, on the verge of a stunning victory against the outmaneuvered Admiral Halsey, turned back. If he hadn’t, his fleet could have destroyed the American invasion fleet supporting the troops invading the Philippines.

By early 1945, Japan was running out of fuel to operate its fleets. Yamato was ordered on a one-way mission to Okinawa, where she was supposed to beach herself and fight to the end. She and the other ships in her task force were detected and sunk by American planes.

Here’s the death of Yamato as portrayed in a Japanese film, Otoko-Tachi no Yamato.

LADY BUG by Paul Telegdi

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lady-bugCRASH DIVE, my submarine series, is so fun to write, I’ve been thinking about writing a series about the crew of a Sherman tank. First step is to see what else is out there, which brought me to LADY BUG. In Paul Telegdi’s war novel, the crew of a Sherman tank fights from North Africa to Italy during WW2. Not all of them will be coming home, however, at least in one piece.

LADY BUG is a flawed minor masterpiece. First, the flaws. The character development is sketchy in the first hundred pages. The point of view jumps around a bit before we find out Hawkins, the tank commander, is the main character. Often, the characters less converse than give speeches to each other. In many cases, those speeches serve as minor info dumps about the war, and the reader is left with the impression the author is talking, not the character.

Nonetheless, like I said, it’s a bit of a masterpiece.

Despite its flaws, the novel feels completely authentic. Telegdi didn’t serve in WW2, but he clearly did his homework. Not only does he capture the geographies and weaponry in excellent detail, but the routines of Army life. The novel reads as if written by somebody who’d been there, done that.

The action scenes are short but enormously powerful. You really feel the rush and horror of combat, what it might have been like to fight inside one of those tanks.

An interesting development is about half the book takes place stateside as one of the characters recovers from an injury and tries to reintegrate into civilian society after the horrors he’s witnessed. This was a risky move, but once it gets rolling, it works, and it elevates the book to something greater than just a pulpy war novel. The result is bigger than the sum of its parts. It achieves something like pathos.

Telegdi has written a lot of other books. I’m curious to check them out.

Books Cannot Be Killed by Fire

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Great propaganda poster from WW2, showing Nazis burning books.

Books cannot be killed by fire. People die, but books never die. No man and no force can put thought in a concentration camp forever. No man and no force can take from the world the books that embody men’s eternal fight against tyranny. In this war, we know, books are weapons.” –President Roosevelt

books-fire

TIGER TRACKS by Wolfgang Faust

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tiger tracksTIGER TANKS by Wolfgang Faust tells the story of a two-day operation as experienced by the driver of a Tiger I tank during WW2 on the grinding Eastern Front. The book is short and virtually without plot. The tanks advance, withdraw, defend a bridge.

That being said, the descriptions of tank combat are incredible. If you like military fiction, particularly the WW2 kind, it’s a gripping read. Gory and brutal.

The book is somewhat controversial. It is purported to have been written as a memoir of a tank driver and originally published in Germany in the 1940s. However, the events in the story beggar belief. Many negative reviews challenge the authenticity of the book on a variety of technical and historical details. Wolfgang Faust is a pseudonym.

I found TIGER TRACKS hard to believe as a memoir but an entirely engrossing tale of tank warfare. Check it out of if you enjoy action-packed war fiction.

Last Japanese Soldier Surrendered in 1975

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onodaIn 1975, the last Japanese soldier fighting World War II surrendered on the Philippine island Lubang.

In 1944, after receiving training on guerilla warfare, intelligence officer Hiroo Onoda was sent to Lubang with the orders to fight until he died in battle. Allied forces landed on February 28, 1945 and conquered the island. Japanese forces split up and headed into the jungle.

Most of these cells were destroyed, but Onoda’s kept on fighting and surviving on what the jungle and raids on local farms gave them. In October, the locals left leaflets telling them the war was over, with a message from General Yamashita ordering them to surrender. The implication was Japan had lost. The soldiers reasoned that Japan couldn’t lose, so it must be a trick. Planes dropped more leaflets with photos and letters from the soldiers’ families. A Japanese delegation even went into the jungle with loudspeakers. Again, the soldiers reasoned they were being tricked.

After five years of this, one of the men surrendered, which prompted the remaining three soldiers to go even deeper into the jungle. After another five years, another soldier was killed. In 1972, another, leaving Onoda alone.

In 1974, Nario Suzuki, a college student, traveled the world with a bucket list that included finding Onoda, a panda and the Abominable Snowman. He succeeded and tried to convince Onoda to come home but failed. His return to Japan caused a sensation, and Onoda’s commanding officer went to the island to personally order him to surrender.

Onoda was crushed at hearing of the surrender. He couldn’t believe Japan had lost. He thought he’d been doing his duty for 29 years, during which time he’d participated in the killing of 30 Filipinos and the injuring of more than 100 others, not to mention the destruction of property.

On March 10, 1975, Onoda, now 52, marched out of the jungle in full uniform, still in good condition, and surrendered his samurai sword to Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos. Marcos pardoned Onoda and allowed him to go home.

He wrote a book about his experiences: NO SURRENDER: MY THIRTY-YEAR WAR (which failed to mention his killing of Filipinos), which earned him fame. He didn’t like the attention, however, so he went to Brazil and raised cattle for a number of years before returning to Japan. In 1996, he revisited Lubang and donated $10,000 to a local school. Whether he was ultimately a hero or villain is up to you to decide.

Learn more about this soldier’s extraordinary story here.