CHERRY BLOSSOMS IN WINTER by Michael J. Summers

This review was published in the November 2024 issue of Historical Novels Review

During the post-WWII occupation of Japan, young American sailors and soldiers enjoy vices and good times in devastated Tokyo as its citizens suffer in the aftermath of wartime devastation. Then communist forces advance in Korea, and American soldiers stationed in Tokyo are dropped into the front lines on the Pusan Perimeter.

The tale of those heady then harrowing months unfolds when author Dane interviews US army veteran Jack Pierce five decades later in Manila. Life in occupied Japan and battle scenes are portrayed in flashbacks. Jack’s recollections are wrapped in love stories; his touching, forbidden love in Tokyo with Michiko during occupation, and in Dane’s assessment of his present-day relationship with Lan as he takes meaning from Jack’s story of lost love. Scenes are described with period detail and vivid images that capture Ginza and post-war Tokyo and the Japanese countryside, and the grit and danger of the Pusan Perimeter. Jack’s character is sketched with depth: a gruff exterior that covers intellectual pursuits and artistic sensibilities. Also well-defined are relationships among Jack and his comrades, especially as they collectively face the eve of battle with shades of bravado, testosterone, courage, doubt, and sheer terror.

Once the battle begins, the action ramps up quickly, and emotional responses of soldiers are rendered both collectively, in an omniscient style, and in the deep third-person point of view of Jack and some of his squad members. Portrayal of the shocking savagery of battle and soldiers’ very human fears and coping mechanisms brings to mind James Jones’s The Thin Red Line. A debut author’s terrific work of military fiction, linked wonderfully with a romance that pulls on the heartstrings.