Necessary Evil

When you’re stuck in the middle of a tiny island as two armies wage war, life is as cheap as the cost of a bullet. In 1944, American forces attack the small, Japanese-held island of Tinian. Tedtaotao, an orphaned native boy, must avoid both armies to survive. The Americans win, and Ted is thrown into a detention camp, but eventually becomes “adopted” by a squadron after he exposes a Japanese spy. When a massive force of U.S. bombers arrives on Tinian, he notices a few things that put him onto a top-secret project. Despite the risk of being shot as a spy, he stows away on a plane headed out to drop some sort of special “gadget” on Japan. At the end of the war, which nation will end up owning his homeland, the Marianas Islands? Ted, who has watched the war as a neutral, must decide who is worse, the Japanese who committed atrocities against his people, or the Americans who have unleashed the fires of hell and killed many thousands of innocents.