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The Burning Mountain: A Novel of the Invasion of Japan

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July, 1945: As the scientists and military men who have built the atomic bomb prepare to test the ultimate weapon, an unexpected thunderstorm arrives at the Trinity test site near Los Alamos, N.M. Lightning strikes the tower where the first bomb -- code named "Fat Man" -- is tethered, and in a literal flash, history is changed. There are still two nuclear weapons left, but until the more complex plutonium bomb can be tested, their use is postponed until 1946. In the meantime, the conventional operation of the Japanese home islands, code named DOWNFALL, is launched as scheduled on Nov. 1, 1945.

With this almost Shakespearean touch, novelist and World War II veteran Alfred Coppel (Thirty Four East, The Dragon) begins his "what-if" account of the invasion of Japan in 1945 and 1946.

Instead of covering the entire two-part campaign (OLYMPIC, the landing on Kyushu, and CORONET, the final landing on Honshu) in the main body of The Burning Mountain, Coppel starts his tale by dispensing with the aftermath of the failed TRINITY test with an "excerpt" from a history of the 1941-46 Pacific War, covering the strategy and tactics used by both sides up to and during the OLYMPIC campaign.

The bulk of The Burning Mountain centers on the March 1946 landings as seen through the eyes of various Japanese and Allied participants, including a Marine sergeant who is unsure that his platoon commander will perform well in combat, a B-17 crewman who finds himself in dire straits when his bomber is shot down, an American Ranger officer whose connections with a Japanese family begin to affect his perception of the war the closer he gets to places he knew as a child, and the Japanese soldiers and civilians who desperately fight to defend their homeland from the invading "gaijin."

Basing most of his account on actual American and Japanese battle plans for the home island campaign, Coppel blends historical speculation along the lines of Peter Tsouras' Disaster at D-Day with some melodramatic elements involving the Japanese-raised Harry Seaver and his Japanese paramour; I would have preferred that the author would have focused on the invasion rather than sidetracked into the mind-bending Seaver storyline. Everything else, from the description of historical characters (Gen. MacArthur, Admiral Nimitz) and the hardware (including the seldom-mentioned Alaska-class battle cruisers, which did indeed exist but were launched too late to see major combat in the real Pacific campaign) and units involved ring true. Coppel vividly depicts the yard-by-yard and often savage fighting that might have ensued had President Truman and the Joint Chiefs of Staff been forced to greenlight Operation DOWNFALL.

Nuclear weapons have only been used in anger twice: at Hiroshima and Nagasaki. The United States has to live with the burden of being the only nation that has ever used them, and against civilians at that. The justification was that, according to the best military estimates, invading the Japanese mainland would result in as many as 750,000 US casualties - and three times as many Japanese. The butcher's bill at Okinawa, Iwo Jima and many other islands had been appalling, and if foreign soldiers set foot on the home islands resistance would surely be even fiercer.

Alfred Coppel hangs this towering story on a single "what if": suppose the Trinity atomic bomb test had failed? Rather than waiting many months for another test, might not President Truman have ordered the invasion to go ahead? Coppel draws on the actual plans that were drawn up for Operation Coronet (the invasion) and Ketsu-go Number 3 (the Japanese defences). As well as the notorious kamikaze flyers, he puts us in the tiny, cramped cockpit of a kaiten suicide submarine, and shows us a column of troops unexpectedly attacked by schoolchildren with bombs hidden in their clothing. Poison gas, flamethrowers... all the horrors of total war. In case any self-righteous Westerner should think such self-sacrifice belongs only to the fanatical Orient, Coppel quotes from Macaulay's "Horatius": "And how can a man die better/Than facing fearful odds/For the ashes of his fathers,/And the temples of his gods?"

As in all the best fiction, a thread of human warmth runs through the apocalyptic scenes. Lieutenant Harry Seaver spent many childhood years living with a Japanese family near Tokyo, as a result of which he is bilingual and deeply familiar with the Japanese way of life. Far more so, in fact, than Lieutenant Jim Tanaka, who (apart from his name) is all-American. With tragic inevitability, Seaver's outfit captures the Maeda village - home of the family with which he grew up. While Colonel Kantaro Maeda is away conducting the defence, his sister Katsuko is still at home, and her reunion with Seaver - her childhood friend - encapsulates the gulf between East and West.

The best book by Alfred Coppel that I have read - which is saying a lot - this is a real tragedy on many different levels. It's not an easy read, nor a happy one, but it is fascinating, thrilling and deeply rewarding.

Harry S Truman's decision to drop atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki to end World War II remains one of the most controversial in living memory. If the United States had pressed on with a conventional attack on the Japanese Home Islands, would it have required even greater slaughter?

For Alfred Coppell's 1982 novel "The Burning Mountain", the answer seems to be yes. That's not only based on his projected statistics (80,000 U.S. casualties, 240,000 Japanese troops killed and wounded, and untold civilian deaths in just the first few months) but the hellscape he paints with such exacting horror. Picture a proud nation consumed by an inferno of its own suicidal design, bent on self-destruction if that is the only way to kill an invader whose presence violates their sense of honor.

"Tactics and strategy had been reduced to one simple directive for all Japanese forces: 'Inflict casualties.' Coppell imagines. "Only by bathing the Americans in blood could Japan hope to obtain tolerable terms for the ending of hostilities."

It's not far-fetched for anyone who read of the bloodbaths of Iwo Jima and Okinawa. For Coppell, the kamikaze spirit provides a launching pad for some wrenching scenes on the ground, delivered in Cornelius Ryan style as Coppell takes us from the wanderings of a downed American pilot to a Marine force confronted with deadly schoolchildren to the pilot of a suicide submarine.

Everywhere is death, a phantasmagoria of pain rendered graphically both in terms of the physical bloodshed and the otherworldly mindset of the Japanese defenders, all too happy to die. "We are a people convinced of the nobility of failure," observes one Japanese soldier before he too joins the rush to eternity. An American soldier, himself of Japanese extraction, is left to shake his head in bewilderment: "I will never understand these people."

Coppell may OD on the Japanese warrior ideal for the sake of a tough story, but it works incredibly well, the story building tension as casualties mount and the death spiral begins in earnest. The only part of the story that doesn't gel is the central narrative, of a U.S. Army Ranger who grew up in Japan and becomes pulled in by his childhood home. Coppell jimmies in a romantic subplot and pushes the bushido business a bit far.

Still, what you are left with after that in "The Burning Mountain" is an often brilliant, always memorable book, tough reading and not for everyone but one that leaves you imagining the smell of war on your clothes. I'm glad I wasn't Truman, but if I were I wish I had the guts to have made the same decision.

The saying goes that for the want of a nail a kingdom was lost. While a fanciful notion (what about the chain of circumstances that left a kingdom so dangerously dependent on a small piece of iron?), it does capture well the idea about how small twists of fate can have momentous consequences. This premise serves as the starting point of Alfred Coppel's alternate history novel. In it, a lightning strike on the eve of the Trinity atomic bomb test in July 1945 destroys the tower holding the device. With the Manhattan Project now delayed by months, the United States has no choice but to go forward with the planned invasion of Japan.

Coppel skips over Operation Olympic (the invasion of the southern island of Kyushu) to focus on its successor Operation Coronet, the invasion of the main island of Honshu planned for February 1946. Using the real-world plans of both the Americans and Japanese, he sets out just how such a battle might have unfolded. The invasion is seen through the experiences of several characters, with historical personages such as Douglas MacArthur, Hideki Tojo, and Harry Truman making brief appearances that provide a broader political and strategic context for the novel's events.

An accomplished novelist, Coppel does a superb job of bringing his imagined invasion to life. The research invested into developing his scenario is readily evident, giving the novel a considerable amount of verisimilitude. Yet in doing this Coppel does not sacrifice character development in developing the plot, as he develops well-realized people that readers can care about. The combination results in an alternate history novel that ranks with David Westheimer's Death is Lighter Than a Feather as one of the best examples of the genre, a compelling read about the horrors of a battle that never took place.

A very interesting historical novel had the invasion of the Kanto plain (Operation Coronet) taken place. The presupposition is that the Trinity atomic bomb test didn't go off as planned (think deus ex machina) and President Truman orders the invasion of Kyushu (Operation Olympic) and then Honshu. This is historical fiction, keep that in mind. If another reputable book is taken into account (The Invasion of Japan-Skates), the Japanese have way too many forces available for the defense of Honshu (Tokyo). Still, despite the irrevelevant romantic entanglement of one of the main characters, a very interesting look at one of the great 'What ifs' in modern military history.

One of the first novels dealing with the invasion of Japan. In this case, a thunderstorm destroys the first atomic bomb test, setting the Manhattan project back several months, so the President - Harry Truman - orders the execution of Operation Downfall, the invasion of Japan. This novel is well-researched and, although there is an underlying story dealing with an officer who lived in and among the Japanese he later fights, it is factual and very authentic. It actually deals with the second phase of Downfall, Operation Coronet, the invasion of Honshu with the goal of the capture of Tokyo. I had read it a number of years back and it is as good this time as it was then.

A well-written alternative history by a science-fiction writer, this is the best of the fictionalized accounts of Operation Downfall. It skips over Operation Olympic (the invasion of Kyushu)and concentrates upon Operation Coronet (the invasion of the main island of Honshu). The emphasis upon a somewhat limited cast of characters, while necessary for dramatic effect, in a sense glosses over the horrific cost of the planned invasion of Japan. Potential American casualties were estimated at about a million, with four to ten million Japanese deaths. It is all too easy to forget that the estimated 180,000 deaths at Hiroshima and Nagasaki literally saved the lives of millions. This book paints a gory portrait of what might have been, and the horrors that the atomic bombs actually prevented.

What if the atomic bomb was not built in time? How would WWII in Japan have ended? How would Japan have reacted to landings on their home islands?

These questions are answered in this well-written novel by Alfred Coppel. The characters (both Allied and Japanese) are fully developed, and the story places them in rather interesting situations.

The story is extremely depressing, however, and leaves the reader wishing for a happier ending.

Great story for a movie.