Flyboys consists of facts surrounded with fiction.

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	• Flyboys: A True Story of Courage James Bradley Back Bay Books, 2004 - 464 pages average customer review:based on 79 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

Flyboys consists of facts surrounded with fiction.

Flyboys consists of facts surrounded with fiction.
I will show 2 sentences from this book so you have an idea of what I'm talking about. And here they are: (P193 in large print) Both Pearl Harbor and the Doolittle Raid were surprise attacks, but the Japanese had targeted a military installation. Now the Americans bombed and strafed hospital patients, children, women, farmers, and fishermen.

Pearl Harbor and the Doolittle Raid were surprise attacks, but that's where the facts end and the fiction begins. I'm sure the American military leaders didn't tell Doolittle to go and strafe some hospitals and school children. It just so happened that the Japanese didn't zone their urban areas, so military-industrial plants existed side by side with hospitals, residential neighborhoods, etc. And don't forget the kind of military power we had back then. Their were no smart bombs, so this kind of thing was inevitable. In fact, we often bombed ourselves with "friendly fire".

The book is interesting, but you might want to skip the first couple of chapters where Bradley covers the manifest destiny and the slaughter of American Indians. It's just that I expected to read more about flying in this book and less about American Indians.

I think Bradley has respect for the American pilots that flew during World War II, but no respect for the government that put them there. He tells many of the atrocities of World War II, but he wants you to believe that we were responsible for just as many, if not more, than the Japanese.

You probably wonder why I gave this book 4 stars. Several chapters are well written and the book becomes hard to put down in the later chapters, especially when he tells about the pilots that flew at ChiChi Jima and their fate.

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Insightful and fair work

Behind the scenes of the hellish fights on Iwo Jima in 1945, another bloodshed was taking place just nearby. The American Air Force planned to fly B-29 strategic bombers from Iwo Jima to Japan, but it faced another peril, Chichi Jima. The island served as critical radar station to detect any enemy aerial activities for the Japanese and held even greater forces than infamous Iwo Jima. This book is a story about the fate of nine Chichi Jima raiders who were shot down, captured, slaughtered, and erased from the history until re-discovered recently.

The essence of this book lies on that it delineates the backgrounds of the central event of the story. Those readers who expected extensive stories about the lost flyboys might be taken aback first; in fact, the first 60 pages are exclusively dedicated to the attentive description of both Japanese and American culture and history. Besides, it depicts circumstances of how the two nations came to the war, and how it progressed.

While this structure creates tantalizing impression, it is also remarkably instrumental because readers can understand the main story profoundly together with its backgrounds. When a writer from one of the two countries writes such a story, the argument often tends to be one-sided, often giving biased impressions. Nevertheless, the author handsomely avoids the issue by this style and his attitude being neutral and fair. Consequently, the book is finished not merely as an anecdote, but as an excellent portrayer of the history.

When we watch war movies or read war stories, the focus is placed often on one side, not allowing the opposing side to tell their circumstances. This misleads the watchers or readers to the lopsided view of the event. On this point, James Bradley has made a fantastic success in describing the event unprejudiced in this book.

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Another Great Triumph

If you liked 'Flags of our Fathers", you are going to love this book. One triumph is that of the author, James Bradley, as he takes you through the horrors of a previously unknown operation during WWII. The other triumph is learning about the bravery exhibited by several young American pilots while suffering unbelievable tortures from the enemy. Read it, cry a little, then go wave Old Glory in their honor.

reviews: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, page 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15

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