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Beyond the Call of Duty: The Complete Tales of Koropok, Volume 1
One of the best series from the twilight of Adventure Magazine’s run, this 11-story saga of an American undercover agent in the Far East during World War II has been sadly neglected for 75 years. But no longer! Volume contains the first six "Beyond the Call of Duty," "The War-Fan," "Flight Without Wings," "Belt of Steel," "Lost Face," and "The Last Banzai."
280 pages, Kindle Edition
First published June 28, 2015
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July 4, 2025
Excellent stuff collected from the brittle, yellowed pages of Adventure Magazine.
Koropok is a spy series set in Japan during WW2. The main character is a Welsh American named Llewelyn Davies, a lieutenant in Army Air Force. His physiognomy resembles the Ainu, an island-dwelling people the Japanese treated like ninth-class citizens. He looked like them and could mimic their almost-total passivity—harder than it seems—because he had lived with his doctor father among them.
Davies “had been in Japan since the attack on Manila, and had carried out his initial orders, which had been to direct American bombers to objectives in Tokyo.”
These stories are tense and atmospheric as Davies works his way into higher circles of Japanese intelligence as a servant so loathed that he is disregarded except as a convenient whipping boy. And Koropok indeed experiences a variety of increasingly dehumanizing treatment. He has the difficult task of remaining in character as a foolish slave while also finding out secret info. Actually the finding out is not difficult. The Ainu were believed so stupid and defeated that the Japanese talked openly in front of him. The hard part is communicating the information back in time to save the lives of Allied troops. Koropok himself is also tasked with sabotage.
As I said, these are suspenseful, immersive stories. I would say they’re underrated but they’re too unknown to even be that.
There are 2 volumes and you should read them both.
Koropok is a spy series set in Japan during WW2. The main character is a Welsh American named Llewelyn Davies, a lieutenant in Army Air Force. His physiognomy resembles the Ainu, an island-dwelling people the Japanese treated like ninth-class citizens. He looked like them and could mimic their almost-total passivity—harder than it seems—because he had lived with his doctor father among them.
Davies “had been in Japan since the attack on Manila, and had carried out his initial orders, which had been to direct American bombers to objectives in Tokyo.”
These stories are tense and atmospheric as Davies works his way into higher circles of Japanese intelligence as a servant so loathed that he is disregarded except as a convenient whipping boy. And Koropok indeed experiences a variety of increasingly dehumanizing treatment. He has the difficult task of remaining in character as a foolish slave while also finding out secret info. Actually the finding out is not difficult. The Ainu were believed so stupid and defeated that the Japanese talked openly in front of him. The hard part is communicating the information back in time to save the lives of Allied troops. Koropok himself is also tasked with sabotage.
As I said, these are suspenseful, immersive stories. I would say they’re underrated but they’re too unknown to even be that.
There are 2 volumes and you should read them both.
Displaying 1 of 1 review