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This week I decided to review United States of Japan by
Peter Tieryas.
The story is set in a timeline where Japan won World War II and conquered
the US. It opens on July 1st 1948, the day the war ends, in an
internment camp for Americans from Japan or with Japanese ancestry. As the war
has gone badly, the treatment of the internees has grown worse, including torture
and executions, and a Japanese liberation force arrives soon after the atomic
strikes that end the war.
However, the former prisoners soon discover that their
rescuers are just as brutal as their former captors. The story then follows a couple
from the camp on their journey to their former home, only to discover it was
destroyed in a nuclear blast.
The tale then jumps forward four decades to
Beniko Ishimura, the son of said couple.
Beniko is widely known for having betrayed the treason of his parents to the
government, and is an officer assigned to censoring portical--their counterpart
to computers--games. Dissidents have launched a new game based in a version of
World War II that matches that our own
history, apparently created by General Mutsuraga, a renowned game programmer
whose simulation software is widely used in military planning.
Beniko and Tokko
agent Akiko Tsukino set out to find the renegade general, whose daughter, a close
friend of Beniko’s, had recently committed suicide. Eventually, their journey
takes them into the depths of the new world’s society, including a variety of
horrible biological experiments, before they are captured by the rebels. Akiko
is tortured and maimed while Beniko tries to negotiate with the rebels.
There is then a flash back
to the San Diego Uprising ten years prior to the main story. Major Wakana,
later to become a general, is seeking to bring a peaceful end to the fighting,
but then Lieutenant Colonel Mutsuraga put vengeance for his wife’s affair with
one of the rebel leaders above all else and while Wakana, aided by Beniko, was
able to stop one strike, he couldn’t halt a second or the bloodbath that
followed.
In the present, despite the torture she suffered, Akiko is suspected
of being a traitor and Beniko rescues her from government agents. Left with no other
way to redeem themselves, the duo sets out for the ruins of San Diego to find Mutsuraga.
But they face many dangers along the way, including a squadron of military
mecha, and a game tournament where losers are executed. And even if they
survive that, the true secret behind the illegal game awaits them…
I give the book 7.5 out
of 10. It doe a great job of blending a manga-style setting with pieces of
novels like 1984 and Brave New World. However while it does a good job
explaining where its history diverged from ours, with Germany and Japan teaming
up against the Soviet Union before moving on to the US, there are a number of
technological changes from the 1940s, and some changes in Japanese society,
like female soldiers in combat roles in the 40s, that are left utterly unexplained.
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