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End of the Beginning (Pearl Harbor)

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I recently reviewed Days of Infamy: A Novel of Alternate History and while I thoroughly enjoyed the book, I complained that author Harry Turtledove perhaps understated the brutality of the Japanese during World War II. End of the Beginning picks up where Days of Infamy left off, and this time, I think the true horror of living in a Japanese occupied territory during World War II is clearly illustrated.

Perhaps it is just me, but I am more horrified by violent rape than I am by death. Death can be horrible, but with death, the horror ends. In End of the Beginning, some of the characters that I had learned to identify with and had grown fond of find themselves in increasingly desperate straights. Hawaii's civilians are slowly starving. U.S. prisoners of war are on a program of accelerated slow death. Their hunger is punctuated by random beatings and grueling manual labor.

Fletcher "Fletch" Armitage, a U.S. POW, is a walking skeleton and his wife Jane, who had been in the process of divorcing him when the war began, is forced to work in a Japanese "comfort house" as a sex slave. She is beaten and forced to satisfy numerous Japanese daily. The writer does an excellent job of bringing home the shame and horror of being forced to surrender your body repeatedly to other humans who do not perceive you as human but as an object to be used. This is not a book for children. I felt queasy reading certain passages, and I am perhaps one of the most jaded Americans I know.

Despite or perhaps because of the discomfort I felt as the stories of characters I had come to care about unfolded and took turns for the worse, this book had me hypnotized throughout. It was better than Days of Infamy mostly because I was rooting for America to retake Hawaii the whole time. I had to wait to read End of the Beginning for this to happen.

Although the Japanese are portrayed as brutal (and they were, historically speaking), Turtledove also portrays some of his Japanese characters as likeable men dedicated to their duty. Commander Genda, who is the engineer of the invasion and Admiral Yamamoto's protege, has an affair with the recently crowned Queen of Hawaii but he is a likable, intelligent man who is not brutal by nature and is simply doing his best to serve his nation.

End of the Beginning managed to to suck me through its 440 pages in two days and left me wanting to hear more of the story. My own war here in Iraq seems boring by comparison to the scope and scale of events in World War II, and Turtledove's imagined land invasion of Hawaii is not that far off what might have happened. A highly worthwhile read for history buffs, action fans, romance lovers and adventure aficionados.

Here is a suggestion. Try reading this book when you are hungry. It will put you into the right mood to empathise with the most common theme pervading the book. Hunger. Turtledove depicts Hawaii under Japanese occupation during World War 2. There is extensive treatment of a collage of characters, in the manner familiar from many of his books.

He shows the privations endured by civilians and captured American soldiers. The experiences of the latter were far grimmer. Though keep in mind that while specific incidents are fictional, the general experiences are not. He draws upon actual events in our timeline, in places like China, Hong Kong, Philippines and Singapore, that underwent occupation. The bitter passages in the text about the POWs are no exaggeration of what actually transpired at Bataan and Burma.

As you surely know, Turtledove has produced several long series of books. When I started reading this book, I thought it might be at least the second in a trilogy. But after reaching its end, I am not so sure. The last pages could be a very apt ending to this series. I am not going to reveal this. Read the book and see if you agree.

What if there is to be another text? The narrative describes the European theatre as basically unchanged from our timeline. And the US focuses its effort there first. So Germany falls in May 1945. But Japan has essentially bought up to two extra years, in which it shores up its defenses, between the Home Islands and Hawaii. There is repeated reference to this in the text. So both the Japanese and the Americans take far heavier casulties, across the Pacific. Now suppose the Manhattan Project continues on the same schedule as historically. By July 1945, the Americans might not control Tinian or any other island close enough to Japan to launch an atomic attack. If the war goes onto 1947, the US will have lost many more soldiers; and have 8 to 10 atomic bombs. The urge to use these might be irresistable, given that they are at hand, and the high casualties, especially considering the atrocities in Hawaii. In our history, "Remember Pearl Harbour" was a rallying cry. But in the book's timeline, this would have far greater force. Not the least because of what the American civilians in Hawaii experienced. (In our timeline, no significant numbers of American civilians endured occupation anywhere.)

An ironic worse outcome for Japan, due to its initial victory at Hawaii.

In this second work of an alternate history in which the Japanese invaded Hawaii after their sneak attack, Turtledove shows his brilliance yet again. He manages to take an alternate view of things, ask "what if it happened this way?" and proceed from their in a logical and, most importantly, an interesting manner. He does well at this in all his works but this one is especially well done.

The situation involves a Japanese occupation of Hawaii. The US wants it back and has failed once already to take it. Caught in the middle are the POWs, the native and the occasional tourist who were trapped there on December 7th. This can be read as a military adventure and it does well as such but the best parts are the characterizations. The bad guys sometimes have some redeeming qualities. The good guys often have flagrant flaws and nothing is as simple as it seems. Especially telling is his account of two US born citizens of Hawaii whose father and mother are Japanese immigrants. Dad is loyal to the emperor; the kids are loyal to Uncle Sam and nobody really trusts them.

Its an exciting read. It is also a thought provoking one.

End of the Beginning (2005) is the second novel in the Pacific War series, following Days of Infamy. In the previous novel, the US sent B-25s against the Japanese on Hawaii, but to little effect. The US also sent a three carrier task force and the Japanese sunk or disabled all the carriers. Later the Japanese installed a puppet government on the islands with Stanley Owana Laanui as king.

In this novel, the Japanese on Hawaii are short of oil and American submarines are preying on their supply lines. Although sufficient fuel is available to keep patrol planes and ships on station around the islands, civilian supplies are restricted to a few buses serving the island of Oahu. Even the sampans are using sails to travel to and from the fishing waters.

Most of the haoles on Hawaii are just barely surviving. Since a prisoner in his squad had escaped, Jim Peterson is now digging a useless tunnel to nowhere; he and his fellow POWs are being worked to death as an alternative to the firing squad. Fletch Armitage and other American POWs are performing hard manual labor, preparing gun positions and other fortifications (Japan had not signed the Geneva Convention); they are also being underfed, but not as severely as the death squads. Jane Armitage is slowly starving on a diet that is not quite enough, even though she is working hard in her garden.

Oscar van der Kirk is catching fish from his sail board and trading some of them for other food supplies; he even has time to surf. Susie Higgens, Oscar's live-in, is getting by OK with her secretarial job and Oscar's fish. Jiro Takahashi and his sons are doing very well by catching fish from the Oshima Maru, their sampan, and taking them back to Oahu; although the Japanese Army takes most of the catch for their own use, some portion is left to the fishermen to eat or trade. Ken Takahashi is giving some fish to Mrs. Sundberg and thereby avoiding any complaints about his dates with Elsie.

The Japanese soldiers are getting plenty of rice, but little else. Their officers are eating better than the common soldiers and the senior officers are occasionally enjoying most of the traditional Japanese foods. Nevertheless, good sake is very hard to obtain.

Back in the states, life goes on much as it has in the past. However, gas is rationed and most traffic is painted army drab or navy gray. Many more men are wearing uniforms now and the Marine Corps has opened a new post, Camp Pendleton, to accommodate the expected influx of trainees. Platoon Sergeant Lester Dillion and his friend Dutch Wenzel are amazed at the attitudes of some of these trainees.

Joe Crosetti is still learning how to fly a plane at the Pensacola Naval Air Station, but he has graduated from Stearman trainers to the Texan. He is still having trouble with navigation, but he is gradually getting better. His friend Orson Sharp continues to be about a week ahead of him in the training.

The Navy is building more aircraft carriers, but are still short of their requirements for a counter-invasion of Oahu. Nonetheless, this counter-invasion will come sooner or later. Maybe Crosetti and Sharp will be assigned to the attacking carriers.

This novel gradually builds toward the climatic counter-invasion of Hawaii. The United States cannot afford to abandon Hawaii, especially now that Japanese planes have bombed civilians in the continental US. To even suggest such a ploy would be political suicide.

Will this be the final book in the series? In some ways, it ties up all the dangling storylines, but a few remain. Jiro Takahashi is an unresolved thread, as are his sons. Kenzo has a haole sweetheart in a prejudiced society; will their growing intimacy lead to snubbing by the haole society?

The whole issue of the treatment of the nisei Japanese during World War II points out an ongoing arrogance within American culture. Every group of immigrants tries to snub the latecomers. Despite old world persecutions against them, each set of religious refugees turns against the next group of religious refugees fleeing to this country. And society matrons scorn the latest immigrants; for example, the Irish in Massachusetts were once considered to be scum.

Highly recommended for Turtledove fans and for anyone else who enjoys tales of alternate history and foreign cultures.

-Arthur W. Jordin

In Days of Infamy, Harry Turtledove presented an alternate World War II where the Japanese followed the Pearl Harbor attack with an invasion. While the attack was good, the rest of the book bored me to tears. Now, Turtledove completes the series with End of the Beginning, and surprisingly, does an effective job of it. There are still massive problems with it, but they aren't the same as his usual ones. In fact, the book is quite gripping, the scenes that are normally plodding actually have a point, and we almost care for the characters.

Believe it or not, I found End of the Beginning almost riveting, and I was able to overlook the usual Turtledove foibles: the endless repetition of character details, not to mention the repetition of plot points. I was going to scream if I heard one more time how new pilot Joe Crosetti is uncomfortable letting the landing guy on the carrier be in charge of landing his plane, rather than landing himself, for example. These kinds of things are forever in Turtledove's repertoire and will never leave. However, usually these points drag the book to a halt because many of the scenes don't advance the plot much. This time, they do. Not great strides, of course, but it's clear at the end of each scene why Turtledove included them. The events that Turtledove puts his characters through are actually interesting for once, rather than just having the overarching plot get your attention (the main reason I wade through his writing).

I mostly cared about the characters, watching the PoWs waste away, horrified by what Jane Armitage is put through. In fact, I cared enough that it affected me when some of them died. This being the final book (I would assume, anyway, from the way he ends it), he's free to do what he wants with characters we will never see again. Thus, none of them are immune from dying. To watch what these characters go through, and then to watch them die, is much more affecting after two books in this series than it was in almost 6 books of his Great War series. Even the Japanese characters are fascinating, almost three-dimensional men (and all of the Japanese are men, of course). Their personalities are wonderfully drawn, and even within the Japanese military system, they are quite different. One of them even starts an affair with an important woman on the island, which surprised me to no end.

However, the Japanese characters bring me to one huge fault with the book, which is a problem in the whole series but is rammed home in this one. The scenes from the civilian and PoW points of view showcase the brutality of the Japanese occupation. They treat their prisoners worse than they would treat the scum on the bottom of their shoes. Prisoners are nothing to them, because they are so dishonored. Even the civilians, with the exception of a couple of random encounters with the occupiers, are treated horribly. However, when we see the main Japanese characters, they are normal human characters that we can almost sympathize with. They are fairly deep, they are interesting to read about (in fact, they are the most interesting characters in the book). The problem is that there is no link between these two portrayals at all. Barely a hint. I think they mention being taken prisoner as a dishonor, but that's it. There's none of the casual brutality. There's no mistreatment of any of the locals. The one main "character" who represents the horrible way the Japanese acted is not a viewpoint character at all. In fact, he's almost looked down upon by the main characters who see him. They don't even interact with him!

This indicates to me a case of Turtledove trying to play both sides at the same time. Since he constantly goes on about callousness being part of the Japanese military mentality, there should be at least some little bit of that in the Japanese military characters. It almost seems like he's afraid to give any of his viewpoint characters these kinds of flaws, because he doesn't want us to lose our identification with them (or our interest level, anyway). He seems to forget that he's turned one of his main viewpoint characters in the Great War books into a representation of the man in charge of instituting the Holocaust. I think we can live with a bit of brutality in our Japanese viewpoint characters. The worst thing they do, however, is slap a few of their underlings. Most of the time, it's the lower-ranked characters who are getting slapped, not the important ones doing the slapping.

Finally, I'd like to point out one of Turtledove's usual faults that actually ends up being a strength (intentionally or not). I have long been a critic of his attempt to write sex scenes, most of them making me feel icky as a reader. In End of the Beginning, however, he uses that difficulty to great effect. Whenever any of the romances have a sex scene, he generally cuts away or just proclaims it finished and they move on from there. He doesn't go into detail. In the Comfort Women sequences, however, he does go into detail. Of course, this detail makes the reader feel uncomfortable, but it's his clumsiness in doing so that adds even more to the effect, making it seem even worse. At the end of the book, you can certainly understand the women's reactions to those who tormented them like this, as you almost share that feeling. And all because Turtledove can't write a sex scene to save his life.

End of the Beginning is a fitting conclusion to this series. It almost made reading the first book worth while. If you like alternate World War II stories, this one is actually pretty good.

David Roy

The Japanese didn't just bomb Pearl Harbor, they followed it up with an invasion of Hawaii--an invasion that succeeded, and killed or captured the U.S. garrison. That done, they crowned a new King of Hawaii, announced it was part of the Asian co-prosperity sphere, and beat back the first attempt at U.S. invasion. A year and a half has passed, however, and the U.S. is ready for more. While Japan has only two carriers, the U.S. has an armada. And U.S. submarines damage the third Japanese carrier sent to help them, taking it out of the fight. Still, the real war is on the ground, and fanatical Japanese soldiers would rather die than surrender.

Even those who favor Japan have suffered under the Japanese occupation. Some native Hawaiians cherish their 'independence,' but American submarines hurt and everyone is hungry. Hungriest of all, though, are the U.S. POWs captured during the Japanese invasion. As they did in our own version of history, Japanese conquerors believe soldiers who surrender are worthless--and do their best to work them to death. Civilians, especially female civilians, aren't treated much better and some, including anglo women, are drafted into serving as whores for their soldiers.

Author Harry Turtledove continues the alternate history begun with DAYS OF INFAMY. In this alternate universe, Japan followed up on its attack on Pearl Harbor, giving it an additional two years of relative security to expand its conquests in Asia.

Turtledove does an excellent job showing the Japanese justification for war while not shrinking from the horrible crimes against humanity that the Japanese systematically conducted. Turtledove's alternate history style--which consists of showing life from the viewpoint of multiple characters including high officers, POWs, marine NCOs, navy pilots (from both nations), and civilians lets us sympathize with the Japanese even as we hope for their (inevitable) defeat.

In END OF THE BEGINNING, Turtledove tones down a bit of his overused 'wished he could, but couldn't' language, making the reading more smooth than some of his recent books (thanks, Harry). A few anachronistic usages ('ignorance is not bliss' and 'had to destroy it to save it' may jar, however. Fundamentally, though BEGINNING is a war story. The Japanese got in the first hit, but America is striking back--and it's learned the hard lessons the Japanese taught.

One of the virtues of alternate history is that it allows us to consider how the world might have changed if different decisions had been made. What if Hitler hadn't attacked Russia but instead concentrated on England? What if Napoleon had won at the battle of Waterloo? What if Xerxes had defeated the Athenian navy? What if the Japanese had invaded Hawaii rather than simply attacking, then sailing away. Turtledove gives us an interesting answer to that question--all the while reminding us that war, even if you're on the side with 'virtue' behind you, is an ugly business.

Following the Pearl Harbor attack, the Japanese invade and conquer Hawaii (see DAYS OF INFAMY). The United States counter assault fails as the Japanese Zero controls the skies. Japan quickly installs a ruthless government that subjects the islands to a harsh occupation though they bring back the royals to allegedly rule (under their thumb). American POWs are worked to death without a second thought and the women are turned into prostitutes for the conquerors amusement.

Japanese-Americans living on the islands are divided. While those born in Japan having a taste of American racism support and help their native country, their children want the return of the United States and freedom. The native Hawaiians see little difference between the two sets of conquerors except that the Japanese are overtly de facto abusive while the Americans were de jure discriminatory. Still most residents regardless of ethnicity just try to survive the food shortages while expecting the battle to return as the embarrassment of the defeat has the White House pumping up the military-industrial complex to win the War in the Pacific.

This is a terrific alternate historical thriller that leaves no prisoners as the audience obtains a taste of racial relationships that leave nothing to the imagination. Harry Turtledove is at his best with the action-packed tale yet the myriad of perspectives (somewhat difficult to follow so expect several days up to a week to read) provide the individual and group dynamics. What if novels rarely reach this pinnacle as the epic saga and the character specific blend into a fabulous alternate WW II drama.

Harriet Klausner

Of the recent Turtledove books, End of the Beginning is the most complete. It has a solid and exciting plot, characters going somewhere and not floundering around, and a lot of resolution at the end. Turtledove even provides some concrete details of the fighting; especially the climactic naval air battle. Much of the book focuses on the horrors of the Japanese occupation on American civilians and POW's. While gratuitous and overly graphic at times, the effect is a chilling and horrifying "what if." Of course the annoying features of Turtledove's style (as described in other reviews) such as repetition of conversations and inner thoughts and one-dimensional characters abound in End of the Beginning. However, these go with the territory for Turtledove readers and the book is very good when viewed in the context of the alternate history genre and rates four stars. My bet is that this series has ended with installment # 2. I suppose that there is enough hanging so that Turtledove could continue the story. However, the important elements did conclude and a continuation would mean a long series of installments of an alternate Pacific War. Perhaps a fast forward to an invasion of Japan would be interesting, but there is no need for replays of Tarawa, Saipan, Iwo Jima et al.

Excellent conclusion to his "what if" of Hawaii invaded after Pearl Harbor sneak attack

I am a big Turtledove fan, having read just about every book he has published, and this sequel is another jewel in his writing crown. I found myself turning each page in anticipation of what would happen next. The same characters that you loved from "Days of Infamy" are back and each takes a different road to a perhaps inevitable conclusion.

Yes, Turtledove does tend to repeat himself at times. A perfect example being Joe Crosetti's repeated discussions of the landing process on a carrier and his intentions to "obey the wigwag flag man no matter what", but it is a small price to pay for what reads as a great examination of Americas attempt to re-capture the lost Hawaiian islands after the Japanese invaded after attacking Pearl Harbor.

The ending is somewhat predictable and if you do not see the outcome for Jiro ( the Elder Japanese Fisherman) coming from a mile away you should not call yourself a history buff. Overall, a great book that kept my interest and really showed a more detailed glimpse of the characters from the first book.

A must get book!

Sam Hendricks, author of "Fantasy Football Guidebook: Your Comprehensive Guide to Playing Fantasy Football".

This book is an excellent sequel to the first book in the series, "Days of Infamy". It tells the tale of an occupied Hawiian Islands after the Japanese (in the first novel) attacked and then ivaded Hawaii.

Turteldove aptly portrays the horros of war, and especially the horrors of a brutal occupation by enemies whose value for the life of captured enemies is either non-existant (for soldiers) or barely existant (for civilians), and whose own culture dictates those conditions. The contrast to American values and its impact are also aptly portrayed.

While a number of scenes are graphic in nature, in this book, they are in keeping with the way such an event would play out and not overdone. Just the same, reader beware, both the deparvity and language are very graphic in places.

I found the telling of America's efforts to retake the islands gripping and true to life, with mistarts and misjudgements based on perception that were in place at the time. I also found that the ultimate armada put together to retake the islands was in keeping with the production capabilitly of the United States at the time, and demonstrated the ultimate miscalculation of the Japanese even if they had been able to take Hawaii.

I did find the one aspect that helped in the counter attack, where American forces secretly built an entire airfield on an adjoining island a bit of a stretch, particulalry in light of the meticulous planning the author had projected on the Japanese to that point. It was not plausible to me that they would "forget" or be surprised in such a fashion...though I think the outcome would have not been different.

All in all, four stars, and a recommendation again for any World War II history buuf.