Novels that tantalize readers by intertwining known facts about the Pacific War with historical what-ifs and maybes bring to mind such entertaining past works as Claire Taschdjian's "The Peking Man is Missing" (1977), about the disappearance of the world's most famous fossils in December 1941; Roger Pulvers' "The Death of Urashima Taro" (1981), in which a young Australian reporter in Tokyo researches the bloody August 1944 breakout attempt by over 1,000 Japanese POWs from the Cowra, Australia, prison camp; and "Nagasaki Six" (1997), Guy Stanley's novel about the fate POWs in the atomic-bombed city.
In "Neutral War," Hal Gold has researched the life of Swedish diplomat Widar Bagge, who passed away in 1970, and transformed his protagonist into the Forrest Gump of the 1920s, '30s and '40s. The character lurks in the background of the major events leading up to, and during, World War II: bitter army-navy rivalry, the Axis alliance, the battle of Nomonhan, Pearl Harbor, Unit 731 and the peace feelers that led to Japan's surrender.
Bagge, in over 400 pages, encounters a stream of major historical figures, including his old poker and shogi (Japanese chess) partner Adm. Isoroku Yamamoto -- an early proponent of naval air power and architect of the attack on Pearl Harbor. Yamamoto's supposed obsession with the numbers 4 (he was born on April 4) and 11 (the name Isoroku includes the kanji characters for 5 and 6), and the recurrence of these numbers in the major events in his life, are raised repeatedly -- perhaps a little too often. Gold also injects a few of the unsubstantiated rumors circulated after the war, such as the theory that Yamamoto may have already been dead, perhaps by his own hand, at the time American pilots shot down his transport plane in 1943.