David Westheimer - Death Is Lighter Than a Feather
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Lines from "44 Blues" ("New 44 Blues") by Roosevelt Sykes are used by permission. Copyright renewed 1962 by Roosevelt Sykes.
Permissions: University of North Texas Press P. O. Box 13856 Denton, Texas 76203
The paper in this book meets the minimum requirements of the American National Standard for Permanence of paper for Printed Library Materials, Z39.48.1984.
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Westheimer, David. [Lighter than a feather] Death is lighter than a feather : a novel / by David Westheimer; afterword by John Ray Skates. p. cm. Originally published: Lighter than a feather. Boston : Little, Brown, [1971] ISBN 0-929398-90-4 1. World War, 19391945Fiction. I. Title. PS3573.E88L54 1994 813'.54dc20 94-43781 CIP
Page v
For Kameo Abe Abraham Rothberg Marvin Jack Teitelbaum
Page vii
"... be resolved that duty is heavier than a mountain, while death is lighter than a feather." First Precept of the Imperial Rescript to Soldiers and Sailors
Page viii
Author's Note
The characters and incidents of Death Is Lighter than a Feather are fictional. Operation Olympic, the planned invasion of Japan, and Ketsu-Go, the planned Japanese defense, are not. The events described in the Prologue are historically accurate until August 6, after which, with the elimination of the atom bomb, the Prologue becomes a projection of then-existing American and Japanese plans.
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Prologue
On May 25, 1945, while American and Japanese forces on Okinawa were locked in one of the Pacific war's most bitter struggles, the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff in Washington sent out plans for an amphibious invasion dwarfing this encounter. It was but a preliminary to another and greater assault in a master plan: "The Strategic Plan for Operations in the Japanese Archipelago."
Code name: Downfall.
Downfall would end the war and subjugate Japan with two invasions of the enemy's homeland. The first, Operation Olympic, would seize the tip of Kyushu, southernmost of the four main islands of Japan, as a base from which to mount the second, Operation Coronet. The armies of Coronet, including divisions to be brought from conquered Europe and British Commonwealth as well as American troops, would strike directly against the heart of the nation, the Tokyo area of Honshu island.
Target date for Olympic was November 1, 1945; for Coronet, March 1, 1946.
Downfall was the controversial outgrowth of the sometimes opportunistic landings which had at last brought the Allies within fighter range of the Japanese homeland. U.S. troops were already closing in on Manila in the Philippines when the Allied Combined Chiefs of Staff first developed the plan at the Argonaut Conference on Malta in the early days of February, 1945. It was not until April 3, when the invasion of Okinawa had already begun, that General of the Army Douglas MacArthur, Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz and the Army Air Forces' General Henry H. Arnold were instructed to make ready for the campaign against Japan itself.
Late in the war there were still differences of opinion at high levels about the conduct and direction of the final thrust. Many Navy strategists wished to isolate Japan from the Asiatic mainland before launching an in-
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vasion, and contemplated preliminary landings on Formosa, Korea or the east coast of China. Most Army strategists advocated attacking the home islands as quickly as possible without wasting time and resources on intermediate objectives. There was also support for a third strategy: not to invade at all but to complete the encirclement of Japan and force capitulation through blockade and bombardment.
There were two chief arguments for preliminary landings in China and elsewhere. They would provide new bases from which to bomb the home islands, reducing Japan's ability to resist invasion, and they would block the movement of reinforcements and supplies from the mainland. General MacArthur opposed this course on the grounds it would send the weight of the Allied advance off on a tangent and so spread Allied strength over a vast expanse of the Pacific that no attack on Japan could be mounted without troops from Europe. Further, he believed the Allies could become so enmeshed in China that even more prohibitive delays might result.
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