Read Ebook {PDF EPUB} Articles on Timeline-191 Including How Few Remain Settling Accounts Drive to the East Settling Accou War of Secession. The War of Secession was a war fought between the United States of America and the Confederate States of America from 1861 until 1862. Its end result was the division of that country and the creation of the Confederate States of America. In response to the 1860 election of Abraham Lincoln, a fierce opponent of slavery's expansion, as President, the slave-holding states of South Carolina, Mississippi, Florida, Alabama, Georgia, Louisiana, and Texas seceded from the Union and formed their own nation, the Confederate States. They demanded the unconditional withdrawal of all US military forces in their own territory, including Fort Sumter in Charleston, South Carolina--despite the fact that Fort Sumter was owned by the Federal government, not South Carolina or any other state, loyal or Confederate. Rebel forces fired on Fort Sumter on April 12, 1861, beginning the war. Lincoln called on the then initially loyal states to raise a volunteer army to suppress the rebellion. Most states complied with the request, but the slave-holding states of Virginia, Arkansas, North Carolina, and Tennessee were offended by the idea of "betraying" their fellow Southern states and instead threw in their lot with the Confederacy. The first major action of the war came in July 1861 when undertrained Union and Confederate forces met at Manassas, Virginia, by Bull Run. Both sides expected an easy victory, but the undisciplined Union troops were routed and fell all the way back to Washington, DC and the Confederate forces, in little better shape, were unable to press their advantage. Despite small campaigns in Missouri, the newly formed West Virginia and elsewhere, there was no more major action that year as the two sides' armies organized within their own territory. The following spring, the massive Union Army of the Potomac, the largest army in the history of the US up to that point, was dispatched to the Virginia Peninsula to move against Richmond. Unfortunately, it was commanded by the extremely timid General George McClellan. McClellan was extremely hesitant to press his many advantages in the offensive campaign, falsely believing he was outnumbered by the Confederate Army of Northern Virginia despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary in his Intelligence reports. After halting the advance when the original ANV commander John Magruder built false artillery out of painted logs, and being similarly held up by subsequent ANV commander Joseph Johnston, McClellan was repulsed from the Peninsula altogether when he first met Confederate General Robert E. Lee. The following summer, Lee defeated the Union Army of Virginia under John Pope at a second battle of Bull Run. Union forces under General Ulysses S. Grant had won several important victories farther west, including the Battle of Shiloh, at which Confederate General Albert Sidney Johnston was killed in action. The Union was also winning the naval war, with the USS Monitor defeating the CSS Virginia in the world's first battle between ironclad warships, and the US Navy establishing a blockade of Southern ports which the CS Navy was helpless to break. However, the East was the war's primary front, and in the fall of 1862 Confederate fortunes were riding extremely high, with Britain and France considering granting the CS diplomatic recognition. That fall, Lee launched an ambitious invasion of Maryland and Pennsylvania. In the West, Braxton Bragg led the Army of Tennessee on a simultaneous invasion of the state of Kentucky. McClellan was, as usual, extremely slow to respond to Lee's invasion, and Union intelligence failed to realize that the Army of Northern Virginia had adopted a high-risk marching order in which each division of James Longstreet's and Thomas Jackson's two corps were all marching alone. (A courier riding from Lee's headquarters to Daniel Harvey Hill's dropped a case of three cigars containing Special Orders 191 outside of Frederick, Maryland but immediately recovered them when two Confederate infantrymen saw him drop it. Had he failed to realize he'd dropped it, it would most likely have come into possession of Union forces who soon took up possession of the ground.) McClellan made the typically foolish decision to offer Lee battle at Camp Hill, Pennsylvania, where the Army of the Potomac was destroyed on October 1, 1862. Lee advanced unopposed on the city of Philadelphia and took possession of it, while Bragg, after defeating U.S. forces at Corinth, Kentucky, conquered the state and moved it into the Confederate States by force. Meanwhile, Britain and France extended diplomatic recognition to the Confederate States, and the war formally ended on November 4, 1862, when British Ambassador Lord Lyons visited President Lincoln in the Executive Mansion to deliver the veiled threat of the Royal Navy crossing the Atlantic to break the Union blockade of Southern ports. Lincoln was forced to grant diplomatic recognition to the Confederate States and accept British Foreign Secretary Lord Russell's offer of mediation between the two states; the decision would forever ruin Lincoln's reputation as a good President in US history. (Fifty-five years later, President Theodore Roosevelt would contend that Lincoln had done so under duress, and that subsequent US governments were therefore not bound to honor his agreement with the Rebels.) Despite Ambassador Lyons' prediction that "in time, the United States and the Confederate States, still having between them a common language and much common history, shall take their full and rightful places in the world, a pair of sturdy brothers," the two nations remained bitter rivals and enemies for the next 81 years and counting; millions of Americans and Confederates born long after the war despised each other with an intensity at least equal to that of their forebears. The two states would fight three more wars: the Second Mexican War (1881-1882); the Great War (1914-1917); and the Second Great War (1941-1944). The Guns of the South. The Guns of the South (1992, ISBN 0-345-37675-7) is an alternate history novel set during the American Civil War by Harry Turtledove. Contents. Plot introduction [ edit | edit source ] The story deals with a group of time-travelling Afrikaner Weerstandsbeweging members who supply Robert E. Lee's Army of Northern Virginia with AK-47s and small amounts of other supplies (including nitroglycerine tablets for treating Lee's heart condition), leading to a Southern victory in the war. Plot summary [ edit | edit source ] It is March 1864, and the Confederacy is reeling after defeats at the battles of Gettysburg and Vicksburg. Andries Rhoodie, a man wearing mottled green clothing, speaking in a strange, guttural accent, and carrying a strange rifle, visits the headquarters of the Army of Northern Virginia and demands to demonstrate his rifle to Robert E. Lee. The rifle, to the Confederates' astonishment, can fire thirty rounds in only a few seconds, with considerable accuracy. Rhoodie and his comrades, who declare that they are members of an organization called "America Will Break" (or "AWB"), offer to supply the entire Confederate army with these rifles, which they refer to as AK-47s. General Lee visits Richmond, and learns that Rhoodie and the other "Rivington men", named for the North Carolina town where they have built homes and warehouses, are charging an absurdly low price for the weapons. Upon visiting the Confederate armory, Lee also discovers that the weapons operate on chemical and engineering principles completely unknown to the Confederate military engineers, and are marked with names of countries of which the Confederates have never heard, such as the Soviet Union, the People's Republic of China, and Yugoslavia. In the meantime, the story follows soldiers of the 47th North Carolina regiment (notably Sergeant Nate Caudell and Private Melvin [really Mollie] Bean) as they are trained by the Rivington men to use their new AK-47s. Caudell notes that the Rivington men display uncanny skill in both firearm-based and hand- to-hand combat, and that they possess an almost maniacal hatred toward African-Americans, who they call kaffirs. Mystery piles on mystery for Lee, as the Rivington men provide accurate intelligence of a raid into central Virginia by Union cavalry under General Kilpatrick, which is turned back by the Confederates and their new weapons. Finally, Lee confronts Rhoodie and learns the truth: the Rivington men are time travelers from 21st-century South Africa. Rhoodie informs Lee that in the 21st century, the supremacy of the white race has been overthrown, and that he and his comrades aim to establish the Confederacy as a nation to preserve white supremacy. Rhoodie provides Lee with the details of Ulysses S. Grant's plan for the coming campaign, and Lee uses this knowledge, in tandem with his army's newly acquired advanced weaponry, to defeat Grant at the Battle of the Wilderness, and again in a subsequent battle at the town of Bealeton. The Army of Northern Virginia then assaults and captures Washington D.C., securing recognition of Confederate sovereignty from President Abraham Lincoln and ending the war. Caudell returns to his previous life as a schoolteacher in Nash County, North Carolina. On his way home, he meets and befriends a Union prisoner of war named Henry Pleasants, who is convinced by this meeting to settle in North Carolina rather than return to Pennsylvania. As the Rivington men settle down as plantation owners in rural North Carolina, Caudell further observes their cruelty toward African-American slaves, and after he is hired to teach arithmetic to a local shopkeeper's freedman servant, he becomes increasingly doubtful of the notion that African-Americans are intellectually inferior to whites. He continues to correspond with his friend and former lover Bean, a native of Rivington who informs him of the technological marvels the Rivington men have brought to the town. After extended negotiations, the Union and Confederate governments agree to allow the border states of Kentucky and Missouri to determine by popular referendum whether or not to join the Confederacy; Kentucky opts to do so, while Missouri remains in the Union. But during the referendum the AWB sent weapons and ammunition into the states to spark rebellion against the Union, but the shipment is captured by the union and adds tensions between the US and the Confederates. The Rivington men claim to be civilians selling their rifles to civilians, and General Grant purchases all the weapons and ammunition. This gives the Union large numbers of AK- 47s in their disposal. In the 1864 presidential election, Lincoln and Hannibal Hamlin are narrowly defeated by Democrats Horatio Seymour and Clement Vallandigham. In western areas of the Confederacy previously occupied by the Union army, units of freed slaves operate a guerrilla war against Confederate armies commanded by Nathan Bedford Forrest. Lee, who had previously displayed a distaste toward slavery and a respect for the courage of the United States Colored Troops, is convinced by the courageous yet futile resistance of these guerrilla bands that the continued enslavement of African-Americans is wrong. After being slandered and threatened by the Rivington men for adopting this belief, Lee runs for president in 1867 alongside Albert G. Brown and advocates the gradual abolition of slavery. The Rivington men convince Forrest to run against Lee on a decisively pro-slavery ticket alongside Louis Wigfall, and pour their considerable money and resources into Forrest's campaign. Lee, however, squeaks out a close victory over Forrest, who accepts the loss well and pledges support to Lee (going so far as to promise to quiet any Southerners wishing to secede from the CSA). At Lee's inauguration, the Rivington men attempt to assassinate him, resulting in the deaths of Vice President Brown, Lee's wife Mary, and various dignitaries and generals such as Jubal Early. The Rivington men's offices in Richmond are seized after a long battle, and Lee and the Confederates discover a wealth of unknown technologies such as electric lighting and computers, along with a collection of books detailing the history of the Civil War as it would have been without the intervention of the Rivington men, as well as describing (regretfully, from the Rivington men's perspective) the ongoing marginalization of racism from civil society between 1865 and the present. Lee leads delegations of Confederate Congressmen on tours of the Rivington men's offices, appealing to the future world's near-universal condemnation of slavery in an attempt to convince them to vote for his gradual abolition bill. Outraged at the Rivington men's betrayal, General Forrest takes command of the Confederate army, including the newly recalled 47th North Carolina (now joined by Pleasants), to seize the town of Rivington and bring the Rivington men to justice. Unfortunately, the Rivington men possess advanced technology such as bulletproof vests, belt-fed machine guns, land-mines, handheld radios, night visions equipment, long range mortars, scoped rifles, and razor wire, and can easily hold off the Confederate assaults. Pleasants suggests to Forrest the possibility of tunneling under the enemy lines and blowing a gap in their defenses (just as the real-life Pleasants suggested to George Meade during the Siege of Petersburg, resulting in the Battle of the Crater). However, Forrest does not botch Pleasants' idea as Meade did in our history, and the plan works perfectly: the Confederates break through to Rivington, Caudell and his men destroy the Rivington men's time machine, and Andries Rhoodie surrenders, only to be killed seconds afterward by a disgruntled slave, who the Confederates allow to escape unharmed. The remaining Rivington men are captured, and the Confederates attempt to use them to unravel the mysteries of 21st-century technology to use in a future conflict against the US who are starting to use their copy of the AK-47 in Canada. Caudell and Bean are married, and Pleasants' free- labor farm is thriving, sending a strong message to the largely still pro-slavery inhabitants of Nash County. Meanwhile, the Confederate Congress passes President Lee's abolition bill, and the story ends with the Confederacy arguably on track for a better future than the that of the South in our history. Awards [ edit | edit source ] The book won the John Esten Cooke Award for Southern Fiction in 1993. [ citation needed ] Anne Colleton. Anne Colleton (1886-1941) was a prosperous South Carolina planter and Confederate politico. She was very attractive, extremely intelligent with a good knack for business and was known to use her beauty and feminine charm to her advantage. Her plantation, Marshlands, had been in her family since Revolutionary times. After her plantation was destroyed in the Red Rebellion during the Great War, Colleton became an early if not particularly faithful supporter of the Freedom Party. She was killed in the opening days of the Second Great War. Anne considered herself a progressive, modern woman who set trends rather than follow them. This was seen in the modern art exhibition she put on just before the war broke out where she displayed works by the controversial French artist Marcel Duchamp. She wasn't above seducing even the CS President, or at least seriously contemplating it, if she thought it would bring her some sort of advantage. She had two younger brothers, Jacob and Tom. Both joined the CS Army after the Great War broke out and they both used their high social status to gain high ranks in the army. Jacob was victim of a U.S. poison gas attack, and was left badly injured. He returned home to Marshlands, and was cared for by the staff. At about this time, Anne met CS submersible commander, Roger Kimball, who became her occasional lover. She was in a Charleston hotel with Kimball when the Red Rebellion broke out. Unbeknownst to her, several of her workers were die-hard Marxists. They had killed Jacob and burned down the mansion at Marshlands during the revolt. Despite her power, Anne was not able to get to Marshlands immediately because of the rebellion (indeed, one Major Jerome Hotchkiss confiscated her car for his troops to use). Once she found out about what had happened at Marshlands, she vowed revenge on the rebels. Anne refused to relocate to St. Matthews or even Charleston, deciding to live in a refugee camp with plans to return to the plantation. When she finally did return, she was saddened, and angered, by the sight of the charred mansion where she grew up. She moved into one of the abandoned cottages (ironically the one that Cassius had lived in) and made a deal with the remaining field hands, who agreed to work for her again if she kept away any authorities who inquired after the survivors of the Congaree Socialist Republic. She kept a revolver on her at all times, which saved her life at least twice. Anne's efforts to restart Marshlands met with failure. Her enemies Cassius and Cherry were hiding out in the woods near her plantation and they tried to kill her by burning down her cabin. She was in the outhouse at the time and she escaped any injury. After that event, she didn't restart the plantation and she lived in an apartment in St. Matthews. While traveling on business, she ran into two of her former employees, Scipio and Pericles who were both living under false names. She later coerced Scipio in returning to Marshlands where she interrogated him as to what happened the night of the rebellion and how her youngest brother had died. She made it her duty to hunt down the remaining Reds, but the CSA couldn't spare her any troops beyond the local militia until after the war was over. As the war ended and the troops demobilized, her brother Tom recruited veterans to finish the job Anne started, eliminating Cassius and the rest of his outlaws. Revenge came one night when Anne was informed that Cherry had been spotted on the estate, ostensibly looking for Anne's "treasure" which she believed the Colletons had buried somewhere. Whilst observing Cherry berating her workforce, Anne noted wryly that Cherry would have made an excellent plantation owner before a skirmish broke out. The militia attacked. Anne chased the wounded Cherry down. Cherry goaded Anne into killing her by recounting how she seduced Jacob and used him to the last. For her hunt, Anne had her tailor make her several pairs of trousers which the fashion conscious set in South Carolina imitated, a trend which spread across the CSA which pleased Anne to no end. Being a shrewd financier, Anne could see what was going to happen to the CSA's economy and ordered her broker to liquidate her assets and buy as many US Dollars and German Marks as possible. Her broker advised against but she was insistent. A few months later, he had to discharge himself from her duties as he had to declare bankruptcy after not following her advice. He was able to tell her she was about the only plantation owner still left in "the game", along with the steel-men of Alabama, the copper kings of Sonora, and the oil men of Texas. Anne also began reevaluating her political priorities after her some-time lover Kimball took up residence in Charleston and put her in contact with the fledgling Freedom Party. Upon meeting Jake Featherston in person, Anne guaranteed him the vote in South Carolina. She helped gather funds for the party, and actually designed the basic model of a Freedom Party rally, which in turn became the hallmark of all party rallies. Anne quickly became part of the inner circle of the party, but that changed in 1922, when President Wade Hampton V was assassinated during a Whig Party rally by a Freedomite named Grady Calkins in Birmingham, Alabama. The whole country turned on the Freedom Party after that. Just as with her finances, Anne decided to liquidate her political assets before they too became a liability by withdrawing from the Freedom Party altogether. She also ended her relationship with Kimball, who refused to walk away with her. Anne rejoined the Whig Party, but she was considered a radical and was cast as an outsider which displeased her no end. Again her financial wizardry saved her from the stock market crash of 1929 with most of her money. She began a relationship with former intelligence officer, Clarence Potter, who was working as a private detective at the time. Although intense, their burgeoning relationship was cut short when it became clear that the Freedom Party were the chief beneficiaries of the economic collapse and Featherston was on his way to the Gray House. Anne began realigning herself with the Freedom Party; Potter, who hated the Freedom Party, vocally disagreed with this decision. Anne perceived Potter's opinions to be an act of control and broke off the relationship. Once Jake Featherston became President, Anne carefully worked her way back into good graces, although he didn't trust her completely. In 1934, he sent Anne to France to assure their place as an ally and to develop close links with Action Francaise. In her two years in France, she in turn developed a close working relationship with Colonel Jean-Henri Jusserand while at the court of King Charles XI and the two organizations began to plan against their mutual enemies. Anne became something of a roving ambassador after this, going places where ordinary diplomats couldn't go. In Spring 1937, she was sent to Baton Rouge with the task of putting Huey Long, the dictatorial Radical Liberal governor of Louisiana, back in place along with the rest of the CSA. Long refused, and was promptly assassinated on Anne's signal. She was also able to renew her relationship with Potter after he saved Featherston's life at the 1936 Olympic Games in Richmond. On the eve of the Second Great War, Anne was dining at the Huntsman's Lodge in Augusta when she spotted Scipio waiting tables. She didn't say anything to him, but made an inquiry to his boss, Jerry Dover. Dover vehemently denied that the waiter was Scipio, mainly because he didn't like Colleton's high-handed manner, nor did he want to lose his best employee. Anne was killed during the retaliatory bombing of Charleston by the USS Remembrance while attending a speech by a fiery congressman with a name like "Storm" in the early days of the Second Great War. She and other delegates initially attempted to ride out the air raid, but were forced to flee. On the way to the shelter, Anne was disemboweled by exploding shrapnel. Many of the surviving men in her life, including her brother, Potter, Featherston, and Scipio, could not believe Colleton was gone as she had seemed as much a "force of nature as a person" and often reflected on how much of an influence she had been on their lives. Congaree Socialist Republic. The Congaree Socialist Republic was an abortive state briefly established by socialists in St. Matthews, South Carolina during the Red Rebellion of 1915. Cassius was its chairman. During its tenure, the Republic established revolutionary tribunals which were designed to try former plantation owners and anyone else declared an enemy of the state and execute them such as Jubal Marberry. Scipio was an unwilling tribunal member who would have preferred clemency but often voted yes to avoid "revolutionary justice" himself. The Republic was more likely to kill enemy soldiers rather than capture them but wasn't beyond holding a few to exchange for their own captured guerrilla fighters. Scipio often parleyed with enemy commanders including Jerome Hotchkiss. The Republic was finally driven into the swamps by the Confederate Army in 1915 and it was forcibly dissolved although the leadership, including Cassius, Cherry and Scipio managed to escape and fought a rear-guard action for the next two years. After the Great War, a force of local militia and recently demobilized veterans led by Anne and Tom Colleton destroyed it completely. See also [ edit | edit source ] : Another Socialist breakaway republic in Southern Victory. References [ edit | edit source ] How Few Remain ( American Front · Walk in Hell · Breakthroughs ) ( Blood and Iron · The Center Cannot Hold · The Victorious Opposition ) ( Return Engagement · Drive to the East · The Grapple · In at the Death ) 0=denotes a character who was a POV in How Few Remain only 1=denotes a character who was a POV from American Front through In at the Death 2=denotes a character who was a POV for all or part The Great War trilogy only 3=denotes a character who was a POV for The Great War and all or part of the American Empire trilogy. 4=denotes a character who was a POV for the The Great War trilogy, the American Empire trilogy, and part of the Settling Accounts series 5=denotes a character who was a POV for the American Empire trilogy and the Settling Accounts series 6=denotes a character who was a POV for all or part of the Settling Accounts series only † denotes a deceased character. Days of Infamy series. Days of Infamy is a two-novel alternate history of the initial stages of the Pacific War by Harry Turtledove. The major difference is that the Empire of Japan not only attacks Pearl Harbor, but follows it up with the landing and occupation of Hawaii. Contents. Days of Infamy. In Days of Infamy , the logic of how the battle could have developed in Oahu is that the point of divergence occurs at a conference in March 1941, when Commander Minoru Genda and Admiral Yamamoto manage to convince the Imperial Japanese Army to follow up the Pearl Harbor air attack with an invasion to capture Hawaii whereas in reality, they did not. As is usual in Turtledove novels, the action occurs from several points of view, including historical figures such as Minoru Genda and Mitsuo Fuchida. Besides these historical figures, viewpoint characters include a corporal in the Japanese Army, a surfer (who invents the sailboard so he can fish once Honolulu is occupied), a pair of 20-something Nisei brothers caught between the warring cultures, prisoners of war, and others. The way that control of the islands is established is that after a third wave of the Japanese air attack on Pearl Harbor (instead of two in reality) destroys the American naval fuel depots, army barracks, and all airfields on Oahu thus establishing air superiority, an amhpibious landing is carried out on December 8, 1941 on the northern shores of the island and drive what little U.S. forces remain towards Honolulu. In the meantime, the Imperial Japanese Navy destroys U.S. Admiral William F. Halsey's fleet by sinking the American carriers USS Enterprise and Lexington while they fruitlessly try to counterattack. (It is implied that Halsey himself is killed.) After weeks of fierce fighting and nowhere to retreat, U.S. forces on Oahu (led by Admiral Kimmel and General Short) surrender and the Territory of Hawaii is annexed to Japan. With the United States' main forward base in the Pacific conquered and much of its fleet crippled beyond repair, this allows Japan to dominate much of the southern Pacific Ocean almost unopposed from successfully defeating the British in the Indian Ocean, occupying all of New Guinea and the Dutch East Indies, attacking Australia, capturing Wake and Midway Islands, and having the ability to launch bombing raids on the West Coast of the United States. But there is a version of the Doolittle Raid that is also featured, where it is remembered as when America struck back at Hawaii, and not Japan in reality, but doing little damage. In June 1942, there is a reverse version of the Battle of Midway where an American task force attempting to invade Oahu is defeated when the Japanese make use of captured American radar systems on the island, and the carriers USS Yorktown and Saratoga are lost while the USS Hornet is badly damaged. The novel ends when, as was common in their other occupied territories, the Japanese create a puppet government, ruling through a member of the Hawaiian Royal Family installed as King in the Iolani Palace; while Americans back on the mainland, humiliated by their loses to the Japanese, swear revenge and begin a massive military buildup that sets the stage for the second novel. End of the Beginning. End of the Beginning carries the story forward through the rest of the occupation. By mid-1943, Japanese occupation of Hawaii has brought a toll of strict food rationing, severe martial law, and American prisoners (military and civilian) suffered abuses from their occupiers. However, the occupation has also affected Japan's military presence on the island chain as the nation has to forgo their war efforts in bringing supplies to the islands; their military conquests in Asia and the Pacific Rim have overstretched their resources, and suffer severe reductions in supplies due to frequent American submarine raids on Japanese supply ships. As a result, the Japanese forces on the islands, commanded by Admiral Iwabuchi Senji and General Tomoyuki Yamashita (the historical leaders of Japanese forces during the Philippines Liberation of 1944-1945), are left without any military support. In the United States, the Americans have amassed the ships and troops to retake Hawaii, and launch another, but larger, invasion attempt. The Americans quickly gain the upper hand, torpedoing the Japanese carrier Zuikaku with a submarine, and sinking the Akagi and Shōkaku in aerial attacks at the loss of only one escort carrier. The Americans, greatly aided by their new F6F Hellcat fighter, quickly gain control of the air, and gradually defeat the Japanese on Oahu. Most important, Japanese officials and their collaborators escape on a submarine as Honolulu falls, but Minoru Genda and the King and Queen of Hawaii choose to commit suicide. Following the American victory, Hawaii becomes the staging point for the American war effort in the Pacific theater, as it was in the actual war, albeit longer. What happens outside Hawaii is sparsely referred to in the two novels of the series. The projected invasion of Port Moresby succeeded, so New Guinea was entirely under Japanese control from mid-1942 onward. The Battle of Stalingrad took place and was a Soviet victory, but there were no landings in French North Africa. Instead, the US shipped a massive army around Africa, possibly larger than the British and Commonwealth forces present for the historical Battle of El Alamein. The buildup of American naval forces for the second attempt to take Hawaii would need a faster buildup of ships than is historical, implying that much more industrial effort was put into this buildup, leaving less for Europe. The implication is that there was no Sicilian or Italian campaign in 1943, and that there would be no second front in France in 1944. More than implied is that there will be no major Nisei combat forces, and that most ethnic Japanese will be shipped from Hawaii to join those in relocation centers in the United States, a blow to civil rights in postwar America. Characters. Viewpoint characters are identified with (vp). Historical characters are identified with (h) Fletcher "Fletch" Armitage (vp) -- Army first lieutenant stationed in Hawaii; later, a P.O.W. Jane Armitage (vp) -- Estranged wife of Fletch, third grade teacher, later enslaved as a comfort woman. Jim Peterson (vp) -- F4F pilot flying off the USS Enterprise who is shot down on the first day of the war. With no plane to fly, he joins the US Army as a private and fights as an infantryman until the surrender. Joe Crosetti (vp) -- Son of a San Francisco fisherman who enlists after Pearl Harbor and eventually becomes an F6F Hellcat fighter pilot. Orson Sharp -- A Mormon from Salt Lake City who becomes Joe Crosetti's friend in flight training and goes on to serve with him in the same fighter squadron. Lester Dillon (vp) -- Crusty Marine Platoon Sergeant, in the Corps since 1918. Dillon is familiar with the islands from his peacetime service, so he provides not only a view of the fighting when the US retakes Oahu but insights into the prewar period. Isoroku Yamamoto (h) —Notorious in the U.S. as being responsible for Pearl Harbor, Yamamoto was killed in April 1943 in real history. General Yamashita (h) —In real history, Yamashita led the brilliant campaign that drove Britain from Malaya, and captured Singapore in less than three months against forces that outnumbered his own by more than two to one. In the series, he leads the troops that invade Oahu and stays in the Islands after the conquest. Minoru Genda (vp,h) —Main planner of the Pearl Harbor attack. Both Yamamoto and Genda wanted to invade Hawaii, but in actual history were not able to persuade the Japanese Army to allocate troops. Stanley Owana Laanui -- The puppet "King of Hawaii" the Japanese set up during their occupation. Cynthia Laanui -- King Stanley's red-headed queen, and eventually Minoru Genda's lover. Yasuo Furusawa (vp) -- A mere Superior Private in his army, Furusawa is better educated than most of his fellow troops and, as the son of a druggist, has at least learned how to make out English writing. He is the only viewpoint character in the Japanese armed forces to survive as a prisoner of war. Jiro Takahashi (vp) -- Born in Japan and still a Japanese citizen (it was impossible for Japanese-born aliens to become US citizens in this era), Jiro has in fact lived in Hawaii most of his life, and owns his own fishing boat, the sampan Oshima Maru , named after the county in Japan where he was born. His sons Kenzo (Ken) and Hitoshi (Hank) do not share in his unshakeable Japanese patriotism. Kenzo Takahashi (vp) -- Born in Hawaii and, thus, a U.S. citizen, Ken sees Japan as enemy nation, especially after his mother is killed by a Japanese air raid on Honolulu. Elsie Sundberg -- Ken's haole girlfriend. Oscar van der Kirk (vp) -- An early convert to surfing culture who never went home after a Hawaiian vacation. He gets to invent sailboarding in order to catch more fish as food becomes hard to get in Hawaii, especially for non-Japanese civilians. Charlie Kaapu -- Oscar's best bud and fellow surfer. After getting caught sleeping with the mistress of a Japanese Officer, Charlie gets to join Jim Peterson and other POWs being worked to death digging a tunnel. Susie Higgins -- Oscar's latest girl, another divorcee from the mainland, caught by the invasion.