Flyboys: A True Story of Courage

Book Description

FLYBOYS is the true story of eight young American airmen who were shot down over Chichi Jima.Seven of these young men were captured by Japanese troops and taken prisoner.One was rescued by an American submarine and went on to become president. The reality of what happened to the seven prisoners has remained a secret for almost 60 years. After the war, the American and Japanese governments conspired to cover up the shocking truth. Not even the families of the airmen were informed what had happened to their sons. It has remained a mystery-until now. Critics called James Bradley's last book 'the best book on battle ever written.' FLYBOYS is even better: more ambitious, more powerful, and more moving. On the island of Chichi Jima those young men would face the ultimate test.Their story-a tale of courage and daring, of war and of death, of men and of hope-will make you proud, and it will break your heart.

Customer Reviews:

a great book.......2007-06-28

I thought this was a great book. It details the interesting background of Japan, covers coditions that military men had to face, and provides vivid details of the daily activities of the Flyboys themselves. This is the first military type book I've read, and I plan to continue reading them and hope they read somewhat like this one. This has done nothing but increase my interest in war stories. I look forward to reading Flags of Our Fathers shortly.

Flyboys Review.......2007-06-13

"We scorched and broiled and baked to death more people in Tokyo on that night of March 9-10 then went up in vapor at Hiroshima and Nagasaki combined." This is a quote of General Curtis LeMay talking about the firebombing of the Japanese city of Tokyo.

This book is about WWII in the pacific, mostly the Americans fight against the Japanese. It is a book about 8 American flyboys that are shot down over the Japanese island of Chichi Jima. They were held as Japanese POWs until their executions at the hands of the Japanese. The fates of these 8 men were classified and unknown by everyone, even their families, until now. The book takes place mostly from 1941 to 1945. These were the years that America was involved in WWII.

My favorite part of this book was when the Japanese were fire bombed and a lot of the city of Tokyo was destroyed. This was my favorite because all the troops were really excited about it. They all saw it as revenge for Pearl Harbor. This really let me get inside the soldiers heads and figure out how they felt.

The main theme of this book is war and how it affects people. All the violence in the pacific affected everyone. It affected the natives because their homes were being destroyed n the chaos. It affected the families of the flyboys because they were shot down and the families had to hear the bad news and were devastated.
This was an excellent book. It teaches a lot about the history of Japan and the war in the pacific. Most importantly however, it tells the tales of those 8 brave pilots that gave their lives for our country.

My review on Flyboys .......2007-06-05

I thought that this book was a great story. It had a good story line, and the whole book made sense with its flow. This book really intrigues me because I am into alot of the military or shooting books. I love to read a book with a lot of action in it. Truly a great book.

a hidden secret for years..........2007-04-26

what happened to some American flyboys on the island of Chichi Jima was kept top secret for years. James Bradley in a courageous book tells us what happened. Talk about destiny, one of the few pilots that was actually saved was a young George W. Bush. The brutality of war is never easy reading, here, torture, cannibalism and secret rituals will punch you in the gut. Bradley does a good job of presenting of both sides of the story as he tries to present an even handed account of culture differences and the atrocities of war.

Flyboys was a strange title for this book.......2007-03-26

First let me say, that I enjoyed reading Bradley's book "Flags of Our Fathers". I was expecting the same professional and unbiased research in his latest book "Flyboys".

After finishing the first several chapters of "Flyboys", I had to check the dustjacket to make sure that it was applied to the correct book. "Flyboys" is a strange title for a book in which almost half of the book appears to be a personal apology by Bradley to justifiy the atrocities committed by the japanese from the 1930's on toward the end of WWII in 1945.

Once the reader finally gets to the chapters dedicated to the actual title of the book, it is nearly impossible to accept as plausible even the facts Bradley presents about the american pow's on Chichi Jima.

I find it beneath contempt that Bradley uses the story of what occured to american pow's on Chichi Jima as blatant attempt to bring attention to his own biased and distorted world view. Bradley almost singularly blames much of the atrocties committed in recorded history on "Christians" which he clearly identifies as the culprit several times in the first few chapters of his book.

High-minded revisionism is not a tool used by legitimate historians and "Flyboys" clearly indicates that James Bradley has schemed to try to present his on political agenda disguised as a historical book on WW II.

What Bradley does present in his book about the american naval aviators who were taken prisoner on Chici Jima easily could have been presented as a short story.
The publisher could have saved themselves the trouble of wasting a lot of good paper on more PC revisionism.

An example of Bradley's failures as a historian is his attempt to blame the loss of the war on the fact that the japanese didnot place enough value on the "third demension" - a phrase Bradley uses for air-warfare - when in fact, the japanese were actually way ahead of the United States military in that "demension" as early as the late 1930's. The japanese placed much value on aerial warfare and it took the concerted effort of all the industrial resources of America to eventually catch up to and surpass the japanese in the aerial...oops, "third demension" (Bradley seemed to like using that phrase a lot).

I was considering recommending this book based only on the facts presented in the book about the Chichi Jima atrocities but there's already a much better book out there already on the subject titled "Sorties Into Hell: The Hidden War on Chichi Jima" by Chester Hearn so I won't even do that.

Unless one is curious about how to write a book dripping with politically correct biased revisionism presented as a historically factual work, don't bother with this one.

Average customer rating:

Drawn between two worlds
A little different from what I expected . . . .
Excellent story
fast as a jet
Long, but worth reading

Flyboys: A True Story of Courage
James Bradley
Manufacturer: Back Bay Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback

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ASIN: 0316159433

Book Description

This acclaimed bestseller brilliantly illuminates a hidden piece of World War II history as it tells the harrowing truestory of nine American airmen shot down in the Pacific. One of them, George H. W. Bush, was miraculously rescued. The fate of the others-an explosive 60-year-old secret-is revealed for the first time in FLYBOYS.

Customer Reviews:

Drawn between two worlds.......2007-06-13

Being Half Japanese and Half American, this book was by far the most compelling I have ever read. I did not know the extent of anguish and fierce country loyalty that both the United States Flyboys and Japanese soldiers had to deal with. I could not put this book down. I was reading as if I was that person or this person in the book and trying to comprehend what they were thinking when doing what "had" to be done. And truly the only book in which the last three words written brought hard warming shivers down my spine and goose bumps up and down my body. And once that was done, I cried.

A little different from what I expected . . . ........2007-04-14

Having seen that a movie has been produced based on this book, I expected more of a narrative centering around some consistent characters throughout. In reality, every chapter seems to introduce new flyboys. The stories of these various men are great -- many were very brave and some had amazing adventures, but there are no central characters who carry the narrative, as I had expected and hoped.

The book really traces World War II, with much attention to the war in the Pacific, putting an additional emphasis on the air campaigns. Thus it is a rather broad-based survey of the world war, not a tracing out of individual lives. The author rightly points out that the air war was crucial, and Japan lost WW II in large part because the Japanese high command never really understood the key principles of air warfare.

The book is very hard hitting. Some facts are quite amazing. I have read a number of WW II narratives and have not seen some of this grisly information. For instance, did you know that only about one Japanese serviceman out of three was actually killed by a weapon (i.e., a bullet)? Two thirds were killed from starvation, disease, mass suicide, or abandonment by the Japanese high command.

If there are "bad guys" in this book, it is the Japanese high command. These people were truly wicked in the eyes of Mr. Bradley. Their indifference to the death of their countrymen was appalling.

One interesting detail -- much is made out of Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Mr. Bradley says that persons who really do the reading about the events of this decade will not criticize the use of the two atomic bombs. The "to the death" fanaticism of the Japanese high command would have made an invasion of the home islands a "lake of blood," with most of the deaths being those of the Japanese civilians. Frankly, the firebombing of the Japanese cities killed far more people than the atomic bombs ever did. Moreover, more persons were killed in the Battle of Okinawa than the combined death toll of both atomic bombings. As Bradley implies, "ignorance makes everything so simple." But hey, we can't deny people their emotional "trip," can we?

Anyway -- heck of a book. By no means a bad book, just not what I had expected.

Excellent story.......2007-03-16

I really liked this book. Very gripping and thorough. There are many WWII books and movies that have been coming out and although I don't think a movie will be made of this book; it's still an eye-opener of how intense and fanatical the Japanese military was back in the day.

fast as a jet.......2007-03-08

If you are a piston-engine airplane lover, this book will keep you on the edge of your seat.

Long, but worth reading.......2007-03-02

James Bradley is an amazing non-fiction writer. I loved Flags of Our Fathers and Flyboys is worth reading, too (although I can't say I loved Flyboys because the topic was very heavy and the book was longer than it needed to be).

Flyboys takes a deep look at war atrocities in the Pacific. And it's not your high school history book. Pilots get their heads chopped off. American pilots. Then officers eat the livers of the dead. Japanese soldiers get bayonet practice on living prisoners, both Chinese and American. The Japanese Spirit Warriors rape and pillage China, killing thousands of civilians--men, women, and children. Bradley even tells of thousands and thousands of civilians being burned to death by napalm. Entire cities are apocalyptically destroyed, leaving nothing but scorched women clutching their babies. These were Japanese victims of America's fire bombing missions that killed more people than both the atomic blasts combined. It's not a book for the squeamish.

However, it is more relevant in our present time of war than most books on the shelf today. It's well written. I recommend this book to anyone who wants a deeper understanding of war.

That being said, the weakness of the book is its scope. It's too broad. It tries to cover too much, leaving the reader trying to mentally chew on something much bigger than bite size pieces.

Average customer rating:

Flyboys
The truth is pretty painful
History vs. storytelling
Why America Dropped the Bombs
leave your biases at home when you read this

Flyboys : A True Story of Courage
James Bradley
Manufacturer: Amazon Remainders Account
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
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ASIN: B000ESSSGG

Customer Reviews:

Flyboys.......2007-08-26

For anyone even remotely interested in the Pacific war, this book's an absolute "must read". I've given this book to two close friends who could not put it down and had the exact same reaction. An eye-opener, to say the least. Read it!

The truth is pretty painful.......2007-08-15

An incredible book for detail into the history of the world that leads to the stories of these brave pilots. It is accuracte but not a flattering commentary about how we treat each other on the face of the earth. Challenging and rewarding to read.

History vs. storytelling.......2007-07-09

Author Bradley is a storyteller and a detective, not an historian. He needs some leeway to establish a context, which is tough to do with such a complicated subject matter. Reviewers should save their historical-critical energies to refute the analyses of real historians.

Technically, the writing is unsophisticated and sometimes inept. There are painful mixed metaphors, an annoying third-person use of the Japanese honorific "san" (and then only when the author approves of the subject), and the unscholarly, disparaging references to those who displease the author(bordering on name-calling).

Once you get by this trivia, you see the book for what it is: a mesmerizing, disturbing, intimate story about the exteme dichotomies of war. As with the tale of Breaker Morant or Judgement at Nuremburg, a reader can take any ideology he wants from this "sideshow of the war", but in the end can not help but be haunted, saddened, and inspired.

Why America Dropped the Bombs.......2007-05-07

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.

leave your biases at home when you read this.......2007-04-16

This is a top ten book in my opinion and a must read. Bradley does draw conclusions but only after citing the conclusions and opinions of others that were there. I do not view this book as a guilt trip, but a historical look from both sides of the fence. While reading this book, I couldn't help but think of the middle east and our approach. War is hell and if your not prepared to fight like the devil, be prepared to be conquered by the devil.

Bradley did a great job in citing historical events that brought us to the conclusion of WWII. If you are NOT a defender of american stupidity, you will enjoy this book. Im not a liberal and I dont feel guilt, but Im not stupid either, and I dont appreciate being lied to by the public school system and having been fed a buncha bulls*it on how the west was won starting somewhere in 1492.

Average customer rating:

A book in search of a subject
Excellent History, But Biased Propaganda
One of the best WWII books I've read

Flyboys: A True Story of Courage
James Bradley
Manufacturer: Little, Brown and Company
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Mass Market Paperback

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ASIN: 031610728X

Customer Reviews:

A book in search of a subject.......2007-05-11

"Fly Boys" an incredible botch. The book promises to tell of American fliers shot down over Japanese-held Chichi Jima. Not far from Iwo Jima, scores of Japanese on Chichi could only watch impotent as a huge American force utterly devastated their nearby comrades, opening the door for fiery assaults against the Japanese home islands. The Japanese proved far better at amassing forces than maintaining them, effectively stranding troops across the Pacific. (Imperial doctrine called for troops to "provision" themselves - by stealing from local inhabitants or by subsisting on insects and flora.) As a result, islands like Chichi and Guadalcanal became home to thousands of starving Japanese troops barely able to bring the fight to the enemy. Desperation exacerbates the sort of hysteria already endemic to every level of the Japanese military when the war began, and the "Fly Boys" suffer their captors' wrath.

Some reviews complain about Bradely's use of "moral equivalence" (Bradley compares Imperial brutalities with those of an expansionist America from the post-Civil War era through the war in the Philippines) to anti-American effect. But those problems mask the book's larger flaw: that it really isn't about anything at all. What starts out a story of American prisoners, goes back to the dawn of Japanese-American relations, the birth of modern Japan and the road to war. Then there is the rise of American airpower, the battles of Coral Sea and Midway, and finally the landings at Iwo Jima and the firebombing of Japan. These historic events don't simply form a backdrop to the story, but become the story, grabbing as much of Bradley's focus as the plight of his downed airmen. Bradley never integrates these threads into a common historic theme, and never explains what they're all doing in the same book. In a book about nothing in particular, everything is irrelevant.

For his research, or maybe because of it, Bradley loses his way almost immediately. Instead of learning about the downed Chichi fliers, Bradley begins with the historical roots of the Pacific war...and then works backward. We see how Commodore Perry "opened" the closed yet sophisticated and highly regimented Japanese society to the outside world. Japan's honor system - epitomized by Bushido - was blameless for the barbarities of WWII. Instead, the modern combat experience of the Japanese demonstrates both compliance with that code and extraordinarily humane (Russians captured in the 1907 war received treatment little worse than that for guests). Bradley contrasts this with the aforementioned brutality of Americans in war.

Getting to WWII, Bradley barely touches on his subjects - instead rehashing more milestones already familiar to anybody with the least basic grasp of military history (or with basic cable). From the court martial of Billy Mitchell to Doolittle's raid on Tokyo; from the Battle of Midway to the fire-bombing of the home islands of the Empire - Bradley gives some marginal insight, but again little bearing on the downed American fliers who become extras in their own story. Bradley not only forgets whom he's writing about, but never clarifies whose perspective. (Bradley compares the cruelties perpetrated by Americans in giving some shape to those committed by the Imperial Japanese, but did the Japanese know of "Wounded Knee" during the Bataan March? Is Bradley is arguing for moral relativism, or merely demonstrating that the Japanese had done so?)

When it's clear that Bradley is writing from his own perspective, the result is a soft concoction of history and euphemism, with little hard fact. This is especially true of the title - nothing in Bradley's book gets to the meat of what it means to be one of the "Fly Boys", though he uses the term throughout. In that vein, "fly boys" may be an image, like the one used in "The Right Stuff" in which pilots were the lone shining knights of the nuclear powered space age. But Wolfe fleshed out his metaphors without being conquered by them (by the end of "Stuff", Wolfe's America has matured beyond its need for such archaic heroes like the Mercury 7 - the era of the lone, shining and supersonic knight had come to an end). Bradley instead uses "Flyboys" to refer to fliers in general - ignoring much distinction between the fliers of different services. Instead, Bradley has "flyboys" as FDR's one-word answer in the desperate early days of the war (was FDR such a fan of naval aviation?), without saying much about how FDR turned that answer into the force that won the war. Other glossed over points - the relative industrial might of America and Japan, and the exhaustion faced by Japan in China even before hostilities began with America. Bradley "shows" much, yet teaches little.

As to the problem of moral-equivalence touched upon by unfavorable reviewers, "Flyboys" engages in a sort of thematic shell-game. In turns, he eschews then embraces the sentimentality of American pluck over Imperial aggression. In a work that reveals the contrasting imagery that each side used for the other (uniformly hostile, of course), Bradley freely engages in imagery and sentimentality of his own - of spirit warriors and Samurai, of those betrayed the warrior's honor code, and those who've inherited it. Bradley charts Japan's ironic metamorphosis from honorable warrior to barbaric marauder, fleshing out the contrasting extremes for each. Yet having plumbed American atrocities, reverses direction for Americans without explanation, and makes them the heirs of the Bushido - a characterization (much like "Fly Boy") qualified or even defined. "Flyboys" is supposed to be an unflinching look at WWII as we haven't seen before, yet its subtitle, offering a story of "courage" suggests he's as much reliant on heroic and unreal imagery as those who written before him.

Excellent History, But Biased Propaganda.......2007-01-10

What could have been an excellent piece of historical research is fatally flawed by an unflinching and blatant diatribe against American culture and action going back to the first settlers in the East.

Under the pretext of explaining why the Japanese resented American "meddling" in the Pacific, Bradley clumsily brings up a litany of (in his mind) evil American policies and acts that gradually become the dominant theme of at least his first few chapters. His graphic depiction of the Rape of Nanking is followed by a diatribe against the Americans' treatment of their aboriginals ( Indians, Native Americans, or whatever term floats your boat this week), and Bradley's intent of establishing moral equivalence is quite clear. As this pattern goes on, and on, and on, one begins to harbor a secret suspicion that this anti-American propaganda -- for there is no other appropriate word for his slick and dishonest portrayal -- was indeed the real raison d'etre behind this book.

No historian worthy of the name would seriously argue that Japan's megalomaniacal conquer-and-slaughter policies were merely a natural response to America's westward expansion, but that is exactly what Bradley tries to do. He is certainly entitled to his opinion, no matter how bizarre, but he is not entitled to play fast and loose with historical fact, and claiming that the US conquered the Philippines and Hawaii at bayonet point in the same way as the Japanese conquered Nanking is not just a stretch -- it's a lie.

Bradley's carefully-calculated weaving of every available piece of anti-American propaganda into the fabric of this book is especially distressing because his research and portrayal of the actual facts surrounding the Chichi Jima incident is otherwise excellent. His analysis of Japanese history and cultural change is succinct and, occasionally, perceptive. Clearly, there are either huge gaps in his knowledge of these areas or, more likely, he has picked and chosen the parts he likes and ignored others. He could have done us all a service by mentioning the Japanese plans for conqest and empire, including specifically everything up to and including Hawaii -- plans that went back almost to the turn of the century and were certainly no secret among the Japanese military or any Japanese citizen that read books and newspapers. He may not be comfortable with direct research into Japanese-language material, but there is at least one recent book in English on the subject of Japan's plans for Hawaii (Hawaii Under the Rising Sun, by John J. Stephan). Japan's militaristic culture and birth rate drove her imperial dreams since the population of tiny Japan, believe it or not, was almost two-thirds that of the whole United States.

For those with a firm grounding in history that can stomach Bradley's distortions, this book can be useful and definitely add to one's knowledge. Personally, I got a lot out of this book, but I deeply resent the deliberate distortions and untruths, and this is one book I would only recommend to other readers with a giant, bold warning label: "Inside these covers lies much good data, but with a large helping of politically correct B.S."

Unfortunately, I suspect this book will get wide readership among students and academics since the leftist history professors will simply love the message in this screed.

One of the best WWII books I've read.......2006-07-25

I picked this book up on a whim and was unable to put it down. James Bradley's book is graphic at times, but enlightening. I found myself extremely curious as to what happened to members of my own family who fought in the Pacific.

2 Book Set; Flyboys: A True Story of Courage, Flags of Our Fathers

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2 Book Set; Flyboys: A True Story of Courage, Flags of Our Fathers
James Bradley , and Ron Powers
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000WOPWRK

Product Description

2 book set.

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Flyboys - A True Story Of Courage
James Bradley
Manufacturer: Back Bay/Little, Brown & Co.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000NY2ZME

Average customer rating:

Flyboys - A True Story Of Courage
James Bradley
Manufacturer: Back Bay/Little, Brown & Co.
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000K07A4Y

Flyboys: A True Story of American Courage

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Flyboys: A True Story of American Courage
James Bradley
Manufacturer: Little, Brown & Company
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Hardcover

Product Description

Flyboys is the true story of young American airmen who were shot down over Chichi Jima. Eight of these young men were captured by Japanese troops and taken prisoner. Another was rescued by an American submarine and went on to become president. The reality of what happened to the eight prisoners has remained a secret for almost 60 years. After the war, the American and Japanese governments conspired to cover up the shocking truth. Not even the families of the airmen were informed what had happened to their sons. It has remained a mysteryuntil now. Critics called James Bradley's last book "the best book on battle ever written." Flyboys is even better: more ambitious, more powerful, and more moving. On the island of Chichi Jima those young men would face the ultimate test. Their storya tale of courage and daring, of war and of death, of men and of hopewill make you proud, and it will break your heart.

Average customer rating:

FLYBOYS: A TRUE STORY OF COURAGE
JAMES BRADLEY
Manufacturer: Warner Books
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Paperback
ASIN: B000HS0SKM

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Flyboys: A True Story of Courage
James Bradley
Manufacturer: Tandem Library
ProductGroup: Book
Binding: Library Binding
ASIN: 1417665246

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