Randy Nelson makes his AHMM debut in our May/June issue, on sale now! Here, Randy discusses how the Aleutian Island campaign of WWII helped set the backdrop of “The Berg,” and why he found it such a great match to tell the lonely story of his characters Seaman Second Class Briggs and Sub-Lieutenant Fujiwara
Shortly after the beginning of World War II the Japanese Imperial Navy actually did invade the Aleutian Islands. The campaign to re-take that territory off the coast of Alaska was the only combat during the war to occur on North American soil. Attu and Kiska Islands, both mentioned in my story, are real places; and both were overrun by the Japanese in June of 1942. It took almost a year for American and Canadian troops to regain control of the territory because of the harshness of the climate and the remoteness of the region.
That, as far as I know, is the only factual background for “The Berg.” Seaman Second Class Briggs and Sub-Lieutenant Fujiwara are entirely products of my imagination, although it’s probably true that a few Nisei (first generation Japanese-Americans) did fight for imperial forces when they found themselves stranded in Japan itself after the outbreak of hostilities. And, to mention one other detail, there were indeed height restrictions on American draftees that were lowered to five feet in August of 1942. But these facts of course are not the point of the story.
What I wanted to capture was an aura of mystery created by the isolation of both men, the unlikely alliance between them, and the immensity of the berg itself. It gives me the creeps today just to think about crossing that Arctic water in Briggs’ tiny boat. The recklessness of that act speaks to his loneliness, I think; but the sacrificial gesture made by Fugiwara makes the latter man heroic in my mind. I can’t conceive of anyone doing such a thing. Well . . . I guess I can imagine it since I wrote the story, but I find it hard to express my great admiration for this “enemy” of Seaman Briggs. One last note on the composition of this story: Alert readers contemplating a bleak and isolated location, a remote lighthouse, and eerie goings-on above and below water might call to mind another, more famous story than mine. I’m talking about Ray Bradbury’s “The Fog Horn” (1951), first published in Tales of Horror. Ray’s story has stayed with me over the years, and I hope I captured some of the same chilling atmosphere with “The Berg.”
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