Flyboys [Hardcover]

James Bradley (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover
• Publisher: Brown; First edition. edition (2003)
• ASIN: B000UPKWDA
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.2 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (139 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #858,030 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

I was born in Wisconsin surrounded by a loving family of ten and loved swimming in cold lakes. When I was a boy I read an article by former president Harry Truman recommending historical biographies for young readers. His reasoning was that it was easy to follow the storyline of someone's life, and they would absorb the history of the times on the journey. History soon became my favorite subject and I have been an active reader all my life.

When I was thirteen years old I read an article by James Michener in Reader's Digest which I paraphrase: "When you're twenty-two and graduate from college, people will ask you, 'What do you want to do?' It's a good question, but you should answer it when you're thirty-five." Michener went on to write that his experiences wandering the globe as a young man later inspired his works on Afghanistan, Spain, Japan and other places.

When I was nineteen years old, I lived and studied in Tokyo for one year. I later brought my Japanese friends home to Wisconsin. My father, John Bradley, had helped raise an American flag on the Japanese island of Iwo Jima and had shot a Japanese soldier dead. My dad warmly welcomed my Japanese buddies.

I traveled around the world when I was twenty-one, from the U.S. to Japan, Taiwan, Hong Kong, Thailand, Nepal, India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Turkey, France, Germany, Italy, England and back to the United States.

At twenty-three I graduated with a degree in East Asian history from the University of Wisconsin at Madison.

For the next twenty years I worked in the corporate communications industry in the United States, Japan, England and South Africa.

In my late thirties I took a year off to go around the world again. On this trip I made it to base camp on Mt. Everest and walked among lions in Africa.

My father died when I was forty years old. My search to find out why he didn't speak about Iwo Jima led me to write Flags of Our Fathers and establish the James Bradley Peace Foundation.

Flags of Our Fathers went on to be a bestseller and a movie, but few saw its potential at first. In fact, as this New York Times article documents, twenty-seven publishers turned the book down over a period of twenty-five months. This difficult and humbling birthing process inspired my live presentation Doing the Impossible.

In 2001 a WWII veteran of the Pacific revealed to me that the U.S. government had kept secret the beheading deaths of eight American airmen on the Japanese island of Chichi Jima, next door to Iwo Jima. After researching their deaths, I informed the eight families and the world of the unknown facts in my book second book Flyboys. (One flyboy got away. His name was George Herbert Walker Bush.)

After writing two books about WWII in the Pacific, I began to wonder about the origins of America's involvement in that war. The inferno that followed Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor had consumed countless lives, and believing there's usually smoke before a fire, I set off to search Asia for the original irritants. The result of that search is my third book, The Imperial Cruise.

I am working on my fourth book, about Franklin Delano Roosevelt and China.

Above my desk are the framed words of James Michener:

"Just because you wrote a few books, the world is not going to change. You will find that you will go to sleep and awaken as the same son-of-a-bitch you were the day before."

For the past ten years, the James Bradley Peace Foundation and Youth For Understanding have sent American students to live with families overseas. Perhaps in the future when we debate whether to fight it out or talk it out, one of these Americans might make a difference.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

35 of 37 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Horrifying tale, October 30, 2006

By 

Phoebus Franca "thebuffer" (San Francisco Bay Area, CA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Flyboys : A True Story of Courage (Paperback)

The publisher deserves some criticism for misrepresenting this book on the cover, dust jacket copy and all that stuff. I thought I was picking up an Ambrose-like narrative kind of story of the WWII fighter pilots. Instead, the book starts with a "big picture" historical view of what the author clearly views as two imperial powers colliding, with little understanding of each other. In other words, US - Japan relations went from Perry's opening of Japan (a destructive act, in the author's view, that was necessary because Chichi Ima, the centerpiece of the story, was needed for US merchant shipping purposes) to total, savage, unconditional war by 1941. (Of course, Japan had been at war already in China and elsewhere in the region; and the US and Britain had been playing behind-the-scenes roles that mattered a great deal in those years.)

"WWII" is thought of as one big thing when it was also, and perhaps more so several linked disputes and hostilities. So, the author provides an interesting and important view, helping readers see the historical line of sight in terms of Japan and the US. The sort of moral equivalency (some other reviewers here called it "liberal guilt") that grows out of this analysis is disturbing -- and unexpected, because nothing about the book's packaging hints at this tone. I felt like I was reading something of a piece with, well, most US history books written these days that are not forgiving or "patriotic" about any of the brutality that's occurred since Europeans hit the shores.

However, having set up the book this way, the author has given himself the breadth to write eloquently about the horrors experienced by both sides of the conflict. The book may spin off into too many directions -- for example, trying to determine whether the atomic bombs were even worth it since the destructive power of the napalm bombing of Tokyo and other cities may have been worse. There are other writers and other books that are more thorough and thoughtful about this topic, although the images the author creates of the taciturn, cigar smoking Curtis LeMay letting loose the incendiary raids is unforgettable -- and does cause an American to have to look in the mirror.

The personal accounts are really the heart of the book and are important on many levels. This has to be one of the first books to put together historical sources to tell a narrative like this. And that narrative is gruesome, so be prepared.

Finally, Bradley may be right that Hirohito should've been prosecuted as a war criminal, not set up as a titular, spiritual head the way MacArthur did it. How would history have been different? I'm definitely interested in reading more about this from other authors.

44 of 50 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Courage, skill, and the right stuff under fire - but questionable assesment by the author, July 26, 2006

By 

tim can (Pocono Mts of PA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Flyboys: A True Story of Courage (Paperback)

A well researched and well told story of navy flyers and more than the specific stories of men the rise of naval aviation's and its new found role in war.

Please be aware this book contains some horrific details of the murder and muliation of US service men by Japanese forces in the Pacific which may be well beyond the comfort level of some readers.

There was much about this book I found compelling:

The Flyboys themselves were wonderful, admirable characters which demonstrate once again the debt owed to those who gave the ultimate sacrifice and those who fought along side them.

Flyboys is one of a number of books which at long last are addressing openly the horrifying facts of Japanese behavior in the Pacific theater. Unfortunately, this is coming generations too late to avoid the near universal denial of such things in Japan over the last 60 years.

The US knew far more of the details of prisoner treatment and execution than if shared with the public or with families.

However, there was one huge negative I never could quite overcome and that was the author's continual effort to compare US actions such as the use of fire bombing Tokyo to the actions of Japanese officers in the field which are not moral equals. To question whether the use of napalm was an effective war measure is fair. to use it to justify sadistic murder and canibalism strains jouranlistic, even novelistic credulity to the breaking point.

As the son of a WWII vet Bradley of all people should understand that war, any war no matter how unavoidable, is an obsenity requiring good men to place the great deal of their humanity aside so that they may restain an even greater evil. Yet somehow it escapes the author that horrific, although impersonal US bombing, no matter how you want to define the morals of war on the civilian population, does not require the same level of moral depravity that is required to kill a defenseless prisoner by hand and then remove from their still warm and quivering flesh, their internal organs so that you may dine on these morsals. One action reflects even in the worse case a perhaps flawed methodology of trying to end the war, while the other reflects deeply personal sadism and evil.

For all its virtues and flyboys has many this comparison left me dismayed.

13 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Why America Dropped the Bombs, May 6, 2007

By 

Jana A. Metheny "californiacool" (Sparks, NV USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Flyboys : A True Story of Courage (Paperback)

I am old enough to have lived through the war and remember it well. I never knew why Japan declared war on the U.S., even though I have taken every history class offered throughout my school career. "Flyboys" is probably the most brutal book I have ever read, almost too difficult in places. I am grateful to James Bradley for having written this book, I now understand why America dropped the Atomic Bombs and put an end to that war. "Flyboys" is a must read.