Dan Maloney

(Note: This is pretty much the same review I posted on bookcrossing for this book. As you will see, I consider the issues involved more important than the book itself, so wanted to put the review out as much as possible.)

When I received this book in the mail in September, I could tell right away that reviewing it would be a challenge. Then a couple of things happened that I thought would provide clarity. The first was the airing of the Ken Burns documentary "The War" on PBS in the fall of 2007. The second was the death of Paul Tibbets, who flew the Enola Gay, the plane that dropped one of bombs that finally ended World War II. Pearl Harbor day 2007 came and went and I still didn't have my review written, however.
"The War" didn't pull any punches about Japanese atrocities--events such as the Bataan Death march. One of Burns' interview subjects, a Mobile, Alabama woman now in her eighties reamrked, "There's nobody of my generation who doesn't think that that bomb wasn't the best thing they ever came up with."

Paul Tibbets(rightly, I think) never apologized for the bombing and his role in it. He also requested to be cremated andhave his ashes scattered over the English channel rather than have a funeral and burial becasue he feared that a gravesite would attract protesters. Perhaps this was overly paranoid of him, but there definitely has been a sea change in attitudes about World War II over the last 60 years. this is especially true of what used to be called the "Pacific theatre". part of it, I think, has to do with the veterans and their contemporaries dying out. When I was in elementary and high school, World War II history was fresh history. Veterans were everywhere. But to today's youngsters, it might as well be the Civil War or the American Revolution(not that many of them know much about those either). Part of it has to do with the tendency toward moral equivalency in our culture.(And Sunrise on Kusatsu harbor is one of the best examples of that that I've seen in awhile) This is unfortunate. Let me make my position clear, in case it already isn't. Japan started the conflict. The Americans ended it. Were the results horrific? Certainly they were, but the only thing worse would have been the alternative--an unbelievably bloody ground war that wouldhave killed a million Americans as well as many Japanese men, women and children. EVERY HISTORIAN I'VE HEARD CONCEDES THIS UNPLEASANT FACT.

Most of Sunrise on Kusatsu harbor has to do with Hiroshima, so this is relevant. It's a complicated novel, though not very long, only 137 pages, and features some coincidences and plot turns aht stretch credibility. The real story starts with two young Japanese lovers, Mieko and tori, whose lives are horribly interrupted by events of the war. Tori, though badly disfigured from injuries received in the Hiroshima blast, chooses to make the best of her life, eventually gong to aAmerica and getting a factory job. Mieko. overcome with bitterness, plots revenge. Unfortunately, too much of the story is told rather than shown. And the things that are shown unfortunately tend to be less important occurrences. I realize that lively, realistic prose, about say, a man and woman visiting a garage sale(and example of one of the passages of the book that actually comes alive for me) is not as hard as writing about more abstract, nuanced and difficult aspects of the story, but this is a writer's obligation. It has to be all good, not just the parts that are easy to make good. I read a couple of other novels around the same time that also had complicated plots that sometimes stretched credibility, but the language, both description and dialogue, was rich, vivid and lyrical. This is not generally true with Sunrise on Kusatsu harbor, and makes the less than credible twists and turns(which even though not credible, are unfortunately pretty predictable0 even harder to take. In other words, the poor reader has to contend with a story that's preposterous but at the same time something you can see coming a mile off, AND he/she doesn't even get any really good language or writing out of the deal. Even ifyou don't have idealogical issues with the book as I do, this is a problem.… (plus d'informations)