The Divine Wind by Garry Disher is an Australian story and takes place in the months leading up to and including World War II. Hart Penrose and his sister Alice grew up in the tiny town of Broome on the western coast of Australia. His father is a pearler, his sister and her best friend, the love of young Hart’s life, Mitsy Sennosuke have trained as nurses. Due to an accident Hart has an injured leg, he will never be able to serve in the Armed Forces, in fact, he feels himself drifting along without any purpose.
In truth, Hart is an excellent observer and while he watches and thinks, he also writes.

Alice decides to become an army nurse and ships out just days before Pearl Harbour. Once the Japanese attack, the Australians move to detain all Japanese, but in Broome, Hart and his father manage to convince the authorities that they can be responsible for Mitsy and her mother. When Alice is reported missing and eventually becomes a prisoner of the Japanese, both Hart and his father start to look at Mitsy and her mother differently. Things come to a head when their little town is bombed and strafed.

I thought this YA story was very well done. The author writes with a simplicity that manages to convey a lot of emotion. He describes the escalation of all racial tensions, especially the white fear of how the natives will react if the Japanese do invade. Hart is a believable character, a young man, often confused by his feelings but trying to do the right thing. There is no simple answer to all the questions that this book brings up, what comes across the strongest is how powerless any individual can be against circumstance. ( )

Set in the years before and during World War II, the narrator is Hartley (Hart) Penrose. His father owned several pearl luggers and by the nature of Broome pearl industry, this meant there was at least one Japanese man on each lugger responsible for diving and obtaining the oysters for pearls. hart's mother was born in England and had never really settled into the strangeness of the Northwestern town and it's weather and lifestyle. Hart and his sister Alice were best friends with Mitsy, whose father was one of their father's pearl fishers. As Broome has been a multicultural town for all of its existence, this was not remarkable until World War II, and then even more when the Japanese entered the war. As they have grown, Hart has ended up with a permanent disability which confines his work choices and he cannot join up to fight in the war. His sister Alice - a nurse does join up and is lost at sea after a Japanese raid. All the Japanese living in Broome are moved to an internment camp - a better lifestyle than a concentration camp and not a prison. Eventually, after bombing on Broome, the Japanese are moved to Internment in another state, and the women and children of Broome are moved out for safety. This is an excellent book handling the teenage years of the three major characters and then proceeding into their adult years. The background to the life around Broome in these years has been well researched and is sympathetically handled but not sugar coated either. The treatment of the Aboriginal population, both those living in town and those on stations is revealed to be very cruel and ignorant. The book shows how fear can turn people against friends. Highly recommended ( )

I have read this novel when I was in the high school. now I recommend this novel to my student. ( )

very expressive. I can feel the frustration, fear and feelings of the war period. Yet there were still happy moments. ( )

Intense, very short, for mature YA or anyone interested in how WWII affected northern Australia. All the characters revealed their part of the story clearly and interestingly. Fascinating. I looked up the title - here's a book on Amazon with a review that summarizes what it means: http://www.amazon.com/Divine-Wind-Japans-Kamikaze-Force/dp/155750394X, ( )