The Greatest Generation.

Flags of Our Fathers

by James Bradley

"But no man who saw Taraw, Saipan...would agree that all the American steel was in the guns and bombs.  There was a lot, also, in the hearts of the men who stormed the beaches."

-Robert Sherrod, veteran combat correspondent who had landed on Tarawa and Iwo Jima

It is seldom that I come across a non-fiction book that doesn't bore me to tears, especially books about war.  It is even more seldom that I come across a non-fiction book with the capacity to bring me to tears.  That is, however, what the book Flags of our Fathers was able to do.

Flags of our Fathers by James Bradley, the son of one of the heroes of the book, details the accounts of the six men who were immortalized in the most famous depiction of WWII.  John Bradley from Appleton, Wisconsin; Franklin Sousley from Hilltop, Kentucky; Harlon Block from Rio Grande Valley, Texas; Ira Hayes from Gila River Indian Reservation, Arizona; Rene Gagnon from Manchester, New Hampshire; and Mike Strank from Franklin Borough, Pennsylvania all came together on Mount Suribachi, during an epic battle, on the island of Iwo Jima, to raise the American flag.

From the moment this story begins, the reader is invested.  Bradley begins by painting for the reader a picture of the lives that these men lived as children, and the paths that led them to that momentous event atop the mountain.  I was struck immediately by the normalcy of the boys and their families.  I realized although I didn't know these boys, they could have been any one of my good friends from high school.  It could have been them that were asked to fight, watch their best friends be killed, and then they themselves to make the ultimate sacrifice.  These boys weren't bred for military duty.  They were farmers, football players, sons, boyfriends, and brothers, true representations of "American boys."

As the story progresses, we see these men traveling along the strings of destiny to come together on the island of Iwo Jima.  It was this tiny island, barely a speck in the ocean, that was the setting of perhaps the most grisly war of WWII.  Our troops killed 21,000 Japanese men but suffered 26,000 casualities while doing it.  Two of the six famous men predicted that this would be their last battle. They went anyway. 

James Bradley captured it best in his quote from the book.

The boys are pushing toward their destiny now. Doc, Ira, Mike, Franklin, Harlon and Rene are rushing to their appointment with an entrenched, dedicated defender of a scared homeland.  Peacable American boys, citizen-soilders about to engage with a myth-obsessed samurai foe.  This will not be a mere battle.  It will be a colossal cultural collision, a grinding together of the tectonic plates that are East and West.  The Western "plate" will be the cream of American democracy and mass-production: in voluntary manpower; in techonology, training, and industrial support.  The Eastern "plate" will be the elite minions of a thoroughly militarized society whose high priests have taught that there is no higher virtue than death in battle.  The results of the collision will alter the fates of both East and West for the next century to come.

Back home, during this time, our country was in the midst of a unity that it has not felt since.  Citizens were mobilized toward the cause of defeating our enemies and bringing our boys home.  We were one big body- one arm engaged in battle in the Atlantic, one arm engaged in the battle in the Pacific, while the heart remained in the homeland, with the loved ones that prayed, toiled, and sacrificed for the lives of their warriors.  I wondered often while reading what it would be like to be part of this unity.  I know that it would be hard.  To have someone I loved deeply go away to war, with the possibility of never returning, to wonder each day if that person was still living, to wait in agony for his return; these would not be easy feats.  I wonder, though, what it felt like to know that it was all worth it, knowing the true urgency of the issue, knowing that if he died, he would not die in vain.

Finally, James Bradley, tells of the lives of the three men who lived to tell the tale of the battle and of the ascent to the top of Mount Suribachi.  Unlike most Americans thought, this was actually the second flag that had been raised on the summit (the first had been taken down for a momento) and these men just happened to be in the right place at the right time.

Bradley says that his father never mentioned his part in the raising of the flag.  He never embraced the label  of "hero," insisting, instead, that the true heroes of the war were the ones that never left the island, his friends.  The picture was never an emblem of pride to him.  In fact, if anything, for him and the other two remaining, the picture became a reminder of loss and sadness.

I am a changed person for reading this book. Although I will probably never know what it is like to endanger my life for the sake of my country, I have seen a glimpse of what it was like for the American boys of WWII and is like for the American boys of today.  I have a deeper respect for the necessity of a standing army to defend freedom on earth and defeat the evil that jeopardizes that freedom.  I believe in the valor and goodness of the United States.  I am forever thankful to the men and women who serve and have served our country.  I will always remember the lives that we have lost.

When you go home

Tell them for us and say

For your tomorrow

We gave our today

-Message chiseled outside Iwo Jima cemetary where our men were initially laid

Recommended:  A resounding yes.  All Americans should read this book.