Hunters’ Island: Beyond Honor
Eighteen-year-old Missouri farm boy Henrik Hahnemann has grown up in the Depression. He has learned self-reliance and often hunts game for the family dinner. After Japan’s 1941 attack on Pearl Harbor, Henrik enlists in the Marine Corps.
Obata Yoshiro is an average twenty-year-old economics student, who will in time take over his father’s glass works. In the summer months, he crews on his uncle’s fishing boat, where he learns to repair engines and navigate in harsh weather and waves. He gets drafted into Japan’s military at the same time as Henrik joins up.
The novel closely follows Henrik and Yoshiro from when they leave home to their brutal training. Henrik and Yoshiro each score near the top of their classes in shooting skills and both are assigned sniper duties. With small squadrons, they each land on the same tiny island in the Solomon Island chain. The Solomons are a vital land bridge in the western Pacific, and each squadron has orders to control them for use as a radio transmittal station spying on enemy ship and airplane movements.
Rottman’s impressive details of food, clothes, weapons, terrain, and military organizations read like nonfiction. He nicely contrasts the two cultures, one with total obedience to authority (from the Japanese Emperor down to military superior officers) and contempt of all people not Japanese; the other, America, a less rigid chain of command and greater tolerance of strangers. The fight for control of Hunters’ Island takes up only about the last quarter of the book, but the true-to-life build up is often as compelling as the close combat encounters at the end. Recommended for any reader wanting an honest, multi-layered military history built around two interesting main characters.
