Product Description

During the American air assault on Japan in 1945, in the last stages of the war in the Pacific, eight US airmen were shot down while carrying out bombing runs on Chichi-Jima. Among them was a young airman called George Bush - he was the lucky one. The other seven were captured and killed by Japanese troops.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1117845 in Books
• Published on: 2004-03-27
• Binding: Hardcover
• 400 pages

Customer Reviews

an extraordinary story
I was pleasantly surprised by how excellent this book is.

Having read James Bradley's first book, Flags of Our Fathers, I was curious to read his follow-up. But Flags is such a compelling personal story - a journey to discover what happened to his father in World War Two - that I wasn't entirely confident he could achieve the same with a subject he was less directly connected to. I needn't have worried. Flyboys is not only well-researched and truly revelatory. It's also an unusually well-balanced and sensitive attempt to get to grips with the horrors of war.

Most of us are aware of the particularly gruesome nature of the war in the Pacific. But Flyboys delves into a previously untold tale that descends into levels of atrocity and barbarism that are hard to comprehend. And this is where Bradley's writing talent really comes to the fore. He doesn't just dig up the facts and tell the story remarkably clearly. He goes much further, placing the brutality in some sort of context. It's the insight and background he places the events within that takes this book to a higher level, giving the reader a grasp and understanding of otherwise incomprehensible inhumanity.

Some American reveiwers have criticised Flyboys as unpatriotic - mainly for taking the trouble to offer a Japanese perspective on the Pacific conflict. But Bradley's credentials are hard to refute. His father, after all, was one of the flag-raisers on Iwo Jima; yet he has also travelled and studied extensively in Japan, acquiring an uncommon grasp of Japanese language, culture and history. And it's this uniquely balanced sensibility that takes Flyboys well beyond the mere unearthing of a harrowing story that it might otherwise have been.

If I have one criticism of Flyboys it's that the author offers so much context and detail that the book sometimes drifts away from its core subject into much wider considerations about World War Two, it's causes, consequences and moral dilemmas. But then again this is not really a fault - it's an integral part of what makes this one of the best books about war you will ever read.