All the lonely people

I’ve been reading Final Impact, by John Birmingham. I won’t spoil it for you, but I am now convinced that JB is a member of the Chrysanthemum Club, just like me. His depiction of Japanese culture is loving, delicate and humanising. Even in their moments of greatest despair they rise above the hubris of the other Axis powers and even of the Stalin’s USSR.

The individual cruelty of particular officers on the field is shown as just that: individual. It sits alongside the human savagery of 21st Century US Armed Forces, as well as the mercy displayed by their 20th Century counterparts.

The main thrust here is, that Hiroshima and Nagasaki are not nuked. Other targets are designated, putting pay to the theory that Japan was the target due to racism and a shared European culture with the other Axis power. For some reason, the Italians do not figure in the picture at all, nor the Romanian, Hungarian and Bulgarian collaborators who sent millions of Jews to the ovens in Auschwitz.

My beautiful, gentle Hiroshima is spared. I have not yet finished reading the book, but I am hoping that Tokyo is spared and that the US triumphs over the madness of Stalin.