Some readers might think that I have missed a point, then find that I return to address it. Many readers will know that I have missed a point because I do not know most of this history that Poul Anderson deals with.
Asagoa tells Tu Shan that the Divine Wind wrecked Mongol ships. I already knew that kamikaze meant "Divine Wind" but it was good to read about the historical winds.
People my age do not remember the War but do remember hearing about it as a recent event. It had a long shadow as I have said here before but maybe eighty years later we are getting out of that shadow. In Ian Fleming's second last James Bond novel, published in 1964, twenty years after D-Day, Tiger Tanaka, the Head of the Japanese Secret Service, tells Bond that he had volunteered for kamikaze but the War ended first. Both Bond and Poul Anderson's character, Manse Everard, had been in the War before their series began. Everard time travels back to 1944. Bond, like most human beings, can only reminisce.
Boat has yet to arrive at World War II.
1 comment:
Kaor, Paul!
That Kamikaze policy was sheer desperate folly on the Japanese High Command's part. A few thousand suicide bombers was never going to beat back the overwhelming power of the US in 1944-45.
Ad astra! Sean
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