The Second Sun

February 1, 2025
Imagine, if you will, that in the mid-1940s, Japan was testing its own nuclear bomb. Imagine further that perhaps--just perhaps--the Americans knew about it. How might they have reacted? The newest novel from the author of Iwo, 26 Charlie (2023) is another highly imaginative, realistically presented military thriller. It's not quite alternate history, because it doesn't create an entirely new version of the world circa 1945, but it does ask readers to imagine what history might have been like, if you make one change--in this case, arming Japan with nuclear destructive capabilities. As usual, the author blends real and imagined history and characters seamlessly (the fictional Capt. Wolfe Bowen, the star of the novel, feels just as real as Harry S Truman, who plays a not-insubstantial role in the proceedings); and, as usual, the story is absolutely riveting, with plenty of nail-biting tension and the kind of creeping dread that make us want to remind ourselves that it's all made up.

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Starred review from February 15, 2025
A World War II Navy captain looks for signs of a Japanese atomic bomb program. In March 1945, Germany has given up, but the war in the Pacific is far from over. Captain Wolfe Bowen is ordered to check out a surrendered German U-boat that had two Japanese passengers aboard and find out what they'd been doing in the North Atlantic. The sub is a strange one, having a second deck but no torpedo tubes. In that extra deck is uranium that the German captain will not show Bowen even at gunpoint. Strahlung, the German explains. Radiation. Bowen reports this to his superiors, who clue him in about our Manhattan Project, which is so secret that FDR (who dies within weeks) even keeps it from Vice President Truman. Bowen also learns that the Nazis had been trying to develop an atomic bomb, so is Germany sharing its technology with Japan? That is for Bowen to find out as he travels by submarine through dangerous Japanese waters. Indeed, as U.S. brass had never expected, he witnesses spectacular evidence of the enemy's nuclear efforts. This news must immediately get to the suddenly President Truman. What if an atomic bomb explodes on our invading troops? In this fictional telling, such a prospect drives Truman to drop U.S. bombs first. Bowen works closely with Lieutenant Commander Janet Waring, who knows Japanese culture and language. They get along quite well--he's a big fellow who pumps iron to relieve his stress, then learns that she is happy to relieve his stress in bed. After the bombs, President Truman directs the duo to visit Hiroshima and Nagasaki and report back to him how bad it really was. And how did ordinary people feel about the American victors--was it rage or resignation? What "the Japanese were calling the second sun had bloomed in the early morning sky over Hiroshima" and left human shadows burned into sidewalks. Survivors looked like the living dead. All colors disappeared, leaving only black and white. Bowen and Waring are exceptionally good at finding out what the big shots need to know, and readers will like them both. Whether Japan ever had its own atomic bomb program is unknown, though the author thinks they probably did. Dramatic history presented in vivid detail.

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