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44 of 46 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Good but--careful, it's the start of another series, November 16, 2004
This review is from: Days of Infamy: A Novel of Alternate History (Hardcover)
Harry Turtledove posits another alternate history, this one, if Pearl Harbor had been more carefully planned and followed up with an invasion of Hawaii. The Japanese take advantage of the surprise to land troops and, with the help of air superiority (since most US planes were knocked out on December 7), take control of the islands. The US is not going to take this lying down, and gears up to fight back . . .
As usual, carefully researched, and with the expected variety of viewpoints, from Japanese commanders to US soldiers to civilians caught in the middle. These characters are often very solid, though sometimes less so (the Japanese fisherman seems like something out of a Japanese version of "Flower Drum Song"!)
Things progress through months of occupation and food shortages on the island, and conclude with a climactic sea battle, the equivalent of Midway (the first real carrier-to-carrier battle). It's Turtledove's look at how the war would have progressed if the Japanese had had Hawaii as an advance base, rather than the US.
Although this book is marked as a "novel" on the front cover, and two of Turtledove's stand-alone books are reviewed on the back cover, this is clearly part 1 of at least a three (most likely four) part series. Several of the US characters (flyboy trainees, for example) never see combat. At least three Japanese characters mull over the question of how they can defeat a country so wealthy that even their trivial leavings make things easier for the occupiers. If one believes Turtledove's foreshadowings (and when he's so blatant, I'm inclined to believe him) the answer will be--they can't. To say nothing of how he dwells on Japanese habits of suicide, execution, and disgrace for those who through little or no fault of their own, are defeated or captured, as well as Japanese military infighting. While he nowhere actually says so (and therefore, I don't think I'm giving anything away) expect a Japanese implosion in future books.
It's good, but it's a limited idea, and the primary purpose seems to be to refight World War II--again--with a little more brains on the Japanese side, but with a safe American victory at the end of the day. If I'm wrong, I'm wrong. But I don't think I'm going to be.
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16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The Japanese Take Hawaii, July 1, 2006
This review is from: Days of Infamy: A Novel of Alternate History (Hardcover)
Days of Infamy (2004) is the first novel in the Pacific War series. On December 7, 1941, Japanese carrier planes attacked the US installations at Pearl Harbor. They sank all the US battleships in the Pacific and destroyed most of the Army Air Corps planes at Hickam Field. They could not sink the three carriers stationed at Pearl Harbor since these ships were at sea.
In this novel, the Japanese send a third wave of planes to bomb the tank farms and repair facilities. Then the Japanese army lands on the north shore of Oahu. Since the Japanese carrier planes are supporting the invasion, the nearby US carriers send planes to protect US troops; then the Japanese planes find the US carriers and sink or disable all three.
The US army fights back as best it can, but is disorganized, outnumbered, and then defeated in detail. Eventually most of the soldiers surrender to the Japanese. Of course, the Japanese consider surrender to be dishonorable and set out to work the prisoners to death. By the way, Fletcher Armitage is an artillery officer in the US Army, not an aviator.
The Japanese army takes Oahu and then the rest of the nearby islands. The Japanese set up an occupation government under Army command. They punish infringement of their orders with death; the high school principal is beheaded for keeping a radio despite Japanese orders to turn it in to the occupying troops.
The Japanese now have a forward base within flying boat range of the continental US. They bomb Los Angeles and other sites and fly recon on the west coast. Their biggest problem is the US use of radar, which they don't yet have despite positive advances in their laboratories.
Since most food stores in Hawaii were shipped in from elsewhere, the Japanese convert some commercial farms to food production and encourage the residents to plant gardens. The fishermen convert their boats to sail and keep on fishing.
Older Japanese residents in Hawaii identify with the invaders, but find that most of their children consider themselves to be Americans. Some Japanese residents are designated as village overseers by the occupying army, but are often more sympathetic toward their neighbors than the occupation troops. However, the haoles still consider themselves to be superior to any colored races; nevertheless, they quickly learn that the Japanese also have racial prejudices.
This novel is basically fiction, but the habits of Japanese occupation armies in the Phillipines and elsewhere have been well documented. The attitudes depicted herein are truly characteristic of the Japanese at all levels. The Japanese still exhibit racial prejudices toward their own minorities and other nationalities. Then, too, other races and nationalities return the favor; the Okinawans were less than pleased about their return to Japanese rule in 1972. And many Filipinos, Koreans and other nationalities still hate the Japanese.
Of course, the perseverance and creativity of the Japanese are also well documented. Fortunately, the US army of occupation in Japan was considerably less harsh and rewarded these and other positive aspects of the Japanese culture. Now the Japanese are teaching us the same lessons.
In real history, the Japanese didn't attack the tank farms, didn't invade Hawaii, and didn't sink or disable the US carriers. The destruction of the tank farms does more harm than good to the Japanese; the Japanese are already short of oil and now the invading force is really short of petroleum products. The invading army hinders the return of US forces, but also takes these troops away from other areas where they were needed. The final difference drastically hurts the US efforts to regain the islands; carriers have to be diverted from other theaters of operation and this takes time.
Highly recommended for Turtledove fans and for anyone else who enjoys tales of alternate histories and foreign cultures.
-Arthur W. Jordin
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22 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
1.0 out of 5 stars
Daze of Infancy, June 3, 2005
This review is from: Days of Infamy: A Novel of Alternate History (Hardcover)
Any adolescent who has read one book about Pearl Harbor should be able to tell something about the tremendous logistical and political difficulties the Japanese Navy faced at the beginning of the Pacific Campaign, and the incredible risks they ran in mounting a raid, let alone an invasion. So when I picked this book up, I hoped to find some clever scheme by which the Japanese might have handled those problems. No such luck. The logistics of attack are never discussed: the scarcity of oil, the scarcity of troops, the lack of a fleet train, the lack of specialized amphibious ships, the vulnerability involved in operating at the extreme limits of supply range.... Similarly, the intense political conflict between army and navy is glossed over. Mr. Turtledove simply ignores all military reality and proceeds directly to the humiliation of stereotyped Americans suffering under occupation. The result is a book with a completely implausible and juvenile premise.
Here is the planning scene: Genda bops in to see Yamamoto and says: "Say, as long as we are attacking Pearl, how's about landing a division of troops!" Yamamoto responds: "Neat idea, lets use two divisions." Genda: "But how will we get the Army to agree?" Yamamoto: "Leave that to me." And that is it. No discussion of the fact that Yamamoto was appointed to the fleet command so that young Army officers would not assassinate him. No hint that Yamamoto had less influence with Tojo than Ghandi. No expression of Army derision at the idea of diverting two of the eleven divisions used in Operation Iai from the effort to take over Dutch oil fields (the reason for the war) to a strategic side-show. No discussion of where to get the 50+ transports needed to carry such a force, or the fuel to operate and escort them. No clue that grouping all Japanese carriers together to form the Kido Butai was a radical and unproven concept that no other naval power had yet attempted. The landing occurs the day after the attack, which means that a 12 knot transport force would have to precede the 25 knot carrier force, the naval equivalent of leading with one's chin. Air cover is steadily maintained, even though the Japanese carriers would have had to retreat to re-fuel, and were urgently needed for other operations....
Alternate History implies some relation to Actual History, with just a few reasonable changes to illustrate the fluidity of history as it happens. Even a fantastical premise, such as the time machine in "Guns of the South", minimizes the changes to the realities of the times. If the premise of "Guns" had been that Lee acquired two more divisions, without any attempt to explain how they were raised or where they came from, it would have been a far less interesting book--really just infantile power obsession. That failing is at the heart of "Infamy"--it fantasizes fictional Japanese superiority without any attempt to explain how such vastly improved capacity for operations might have been managed.
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