The Eternal Zero

by Naoki Hyakuta

  “An ace. The real deal,” ruled Lieutenant Carl Levinson, the Ticonderoga’s own ace. Many of the pilots nodded. “If there are any samurai left in Japan, I’d say he was one of them.”

  I agreed. But if this man was a samurai, then we had to behave like knights.

  As all the free hands stood at attention on the flight deck, a volley of rifles sounded off. The captain and his officers saluted as the shrouded corpse of the pilot slid down the plank and into the waters below.

  The body of the Zero pilot, with chains serving as weight, slowly sank into the depths of the sea.

  Naoki Hyakuta, born in 1956 in Osaka, earned renown in the television industry as a variety show scriptwriter before embarking on a meteoric second career as a novelist. In addition to his bestselling works exploring twentieth-century history, Mr. Hyakuta is popular for his excellent footwork in the boxing genre. In 2013, The Man They Called a Pirate won the annual Japan Booksellers’ Award, an honor he deems “much more significant” than his country’s lead prize for popular fiction. The Eternal Zero is his first work to appear in English.