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Flyboys: A True Story of Courage | 
 enlarge | Author: James Bradley
Publisher: Back Bay Books
Category: Book
List Price: $14.95
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Rating:  80 reviews
Sales Rank: 15935
Media: Paperback
Edition: 2nd
Pages: 464
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 0.9
Dimensions (in): 8.1 x 5.2 x 1.3
ISBN: 0316159433
Dewey Decimal Number: 940.540509528
EAN: 9780316159432
ASIN: 0316159433
Publication Date: September 14, 2004
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Product Description
This acclaimed bestseller brilliantly illuminates a hidden piece of World War II history as it tells the harrowing true story 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.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 75 more reviews...
 Needless progagandizing and profiting on the memories of heroes May 10, 2006
Michael L. Starzec (Grayslake, IL USA)
48 out of 67 found this review helpful
This book confused me. It's not that the book was difficult to read; in fact, it's a very easy read. The problem with the book is that rather than just telling the story of the flyers, the author delves into a litany of moral equivalence and cultural relativism to make the barbaric conduct of the Japanese seem to be no different from that of the United States. Indeed, a book which one would think to be a sympathetic portrayal of pilots who fought, died and were brutally killed by the Japanese seems to turn the concept on its head. In the first 107 pages, he effectively blames the US for `ethnically cleansing' the Native Americans, stealing half of Mexico and then greedily using gunboat diplomacy to open up Japan to trade while we invaded an uninhabited island named Chichi Jima, where the `Flyboys' fought in WWII. In 1862 when Japan's first steam ship seized Chichi Jima back, the author notes sagely, that the Japanese had `learned their lessons [of conquest] well." In other words, it's our fault became militaristic
Most galling of all is the author's deliberate attempt to draw parallels between America's actions Philippines to the Rape of Nanking and the invasion of China by Japan. It would have been one thing to say the Japanese used America's methods and occupation of the Philippines as proof that America was hypocritical, but then to provide facts which gives an even portrayal of America in the Philippines. However, if one were to read his version of the Philippines/American experience, you'd think all Americans were genocidal war mongers. He chooses the worst quotes from US military figures and the worst examples of barbarity of the 4 year insurrection, making it seem these events and speakers are emblematic of the American conduct at the time. It's a dead lie.
He claims that in 4 years America caused the deaths of 250,000 in about four years which he says is `serious killing' since Hitler and Tojo killed 400,000 in 8 years, making our monthly kill rate as high as Hitler and Tojo as US `civilizers' of the Philippines. First, this number is a blatant mischaracterization. Americans did not kill 250,000 people. Stanley Karnow, the author of the seminal work on Vietnam and author of a similar book on America in the Philippines, is no American apologist and no right wing militarist, yet in his book, In our Image, he disagrees with the author's perspective. 200,000 people did die, but only if you account for famine (i.e. no food production) and disease caused by the side effects of war. Second, Tojo and Hitler deliberately set out to kill any non-German and non-Japanese to provide living space for their `superior' peoples. As seen below, that was not our goal in the Philippines. Third, logic would dictate that if the US were as brutal as he claims, how did we beat the Filipinos? We usually had no more than a 40,000 men in arms there and were weeks away from America. The reason Karnow points out is simple. We proved to the Filipinos that we were different from colonizers. Those same `barbaric' soldiers in the Philippines were opening schools in remote villages and teaching peasants how to read, something only rich Spanish allied Filipinos were entitled to. In ten years, the literacy rate jumped from 20 to 50%
Americans passed laws limiting how long we could stay, requiring that Americans could not own vast tracts of land. Americans bought land from the Catholic church and gave it to the people. No money ever left the Philippines, all tax revenue went to the government. Americans doubled the survival rate of children because we established inoculations and health clinics. Within 10 years, Filipinos were running their own government and had the first modern constitution and national assembly four years after we arrived. Philippines President, Manuel Quezon, is famous in the Philippines for complaining of the difficulty of fostering a national identity under such benevolent control. He said, "damn the Americans, why don't they tyrannize more?" I doubt the Chinese said that about Japan nor Europe about Nazi.
His comparisons make even less sense after he goes through the grotesque litany of butchery and savagery of Japan in China. Raping every woman they met, wiping out every person in Nanking, killing 250,000 in one region because the Doolittle raiders landed there... it turns my stomach. Trust me, I know some American soldiers and leaders committed evil acts in the Philippines and in WWII, but to attempt to use those discrete incidents into a theme of Americanism is wrong. He even goes so far as insinuating that our decision to cut off oil from Japan made Japan expand the war and attack us at Pearl Harbor. Without the embargo, Japan might not have felt the need to attack South East Asia for its oil, limiting the war only to China and no where else in Asia.
Why did I read the book if I hated it so much? Very simple. The person who recommended it to me did so because I love history. When he described the author's viewpoint of our conduct in the Philippines, I was stunned at how one sided he was. I had to read the book to see it for myself. There are so many who don't know history that a propaganda effort, disguised as history, serves only to push a perspective, not the truth. My kind of history is the way I like my news. Give me both sides and let me decide. This author knows history doesn't support the view that the US was as bad as Japan in 1941 so he bends the truth to prove his viewpoint.
To be frank, I feel sorry for the surviving Flyboys who were interviewed and the families of the deceased Flyboys whose true story is allegedly finally told in this book. I think he took advantage of some old men, old loves, their families and some real American heroes to make a buck. I wonder how many of those men and women who read the book and saw an America they recognized. I know I didn't.
 I Could Not Put It Down...I Will Not Be The Same December 11, 2004
Jacob Hantla (Chandler, AZ United States)
45 out of 64 found this review helpful
I Can now hold James Bradley personally responsible for many early mornings and late nights for writing, first, "Flags of Our Fathers" and now "Flyboys"...Despite the need to study for final exams and despite having a ton of work to do, I found myself reading Flyboys every chance I got, finishing the 336 pages of text in about a week.
Bradley tells the story of American pilots who get shot down over the Japanese Island of Chichi Jima, and least that's the cover story of the book. But in actuality, the book is much more than a narrow-viewed focus on the lives and fates of a few among millions dead in the fierce Pacific battles of WWII. Instead, it is the story of war, the story of the rise and fall of two empires: America and Japan. Each saw in the other nothing but soul-less devils, holding the world to hypocritical, self-serving standards. The result allowed Americans to kill millions of combatants and noncombatants alike in the fire bombing of Japanese citizens. The Japanese would rape, murder, and even eat (yes, eat) millions of Americans, Chinese, and Russians. However, despite such savagery from both sides, Bradley does an excellent job of portraying the big picture that could allow such things to happen The individual perpetrators of the crimes are not exonerated, but I often found myself thinking that I would have done the same if I was in the same situation. Would I have incinerated infants with napalm? Would I have speared or decapitated other human beings? I would recommend this thought provoking book, tracing the paths of some American flyboys on their road from childhood in the Homeland to their cruel demise in the Land of the Rising Sun. Mr. Bradley obviously poured his heart into the writing of this book, just as he did his first, and his extensive research and heart-searching shows.
If you know much or nothing of the war in the Pacific, this book will still have much to teach you. You will not walk away from a single chapter untouched. I certainly was not able to: Highly Recommmended.
-Jacob Hantla
History That Needs Telling October 20, 2004
Jerry Loveless (Las Vegas)
23 out of 31 found this review helpful
The Japanese have NEVER acknowledged their war atrocities. Their textbooks and museums hide their horrible behavior during WWII; the average Japanese knows little if anything about the Rape of Nanking, or the slaughter of millions in Manchuria and Korea, or the vicious treatment of POW's by their troops.
Even in the U.S. we've hidden, and continue to hide, the horrors committed by the Japanese against our POW's. "Flyboys" details the sickening treatment by the Japanese of a small group of American Naval Aviators shot down during attacks on the tiny island of Chichi Jima.
After the war, the courts-martial of the Japanese involved in this affair were sealed and classified Top Secret - because of fear of retribution against Japan by a horrified America. The cover-up lasted until Bradley, who wrote Flags of Our Fathers (about Iwo Jima) heard from a reader who told him the story of Chichi Jima. Bradley, then uncovered the full story via the Freedom of Infomation act and wrote this very powerful book.
It's a horrible story; one that should not be hidden, but instead should be told and retold.
 Good core story, but falls far short February 15, 2005
Trader Mort (San Diego)
22 out of 27 found this review helpful
Two words sum up James Bradley's Flyboys: muddled mess. The root of Bradley's book, the capture and horrific deaths of American pilots on Chichi Jima is absolutely compelling, and the author does his best to unearth information to shed light on this almost forgotten event. Most significantly, Bradley manages to find Japanese witnesses that supplement sketchy written documentation.
Flyboys' ultimate demise is the authors attempt to tackle the issue of moral equivalency between Japanese atrocities in World War Two and American atrocities, primarily against Native Americans in the 19th century. As most historians know, this moralist-type approach is a potential quagmire. Bradley strives to be balanced, but he does not manage to present that in his book, resulting in him getting caught on the slippery slope of 'they did bad things, but look what we did...' When the author must bring up the history of the Indian Wars in a book that is supposed to discuss the Second World War, that is a clear indication the author is struggling to find some parameter to the subject matter.
I commend Bradley for trying to be fair, but he just does not do a very good job of presenting the story. Flyboys spends at least 60% of the book addressing the issue of moral equivalency, and the remaining 40% discussing the core story of the flyers. Many people will undoubtedly be angered when Bradley calls the four presidents on Mount Rushmore `white supremacists', and when he completely rips Theodore Roosevelt.
My biggest gripe is that, while it is true the Indian Wars was not exactly the high point of U.S. history, Bradley softpedals Japan's actions from the 1850s to the end of World War Two. He argues that Japan was a peace-loving, almost pacifistic nation before the United States forcibly pushed the country on the path of imperialism with the Perry expedition. He says the `Spirit Warriors' misappropriated Bushido and turned it into a vehicle for aggression, dehumanization, rape, and murder. This then uses this issue to excuse the actions of many average Japanese soldiers who committed atrocities. Bradley claims that most soldiers were essentially conditioned to follow the Spirit Warriors, not being able to differentiate right from wrong. He later contradicts himself when he tells of sympathetic Japansese on Chichi Jima who apparently did recognize what was happing was just wrong. Daniel Goldhagen claimed in his book, 'Hitler's Willing Executioners', that many non-Nazi Germans were perfectly aware of the Holocaust and voluntarily went along with it. Bradley makes no attempt in his book, to examine if this possibility occurred in Japan.
Bradley may be somebody trying to come to terms with his family's history, so he is perhaps trying a bit too hard to come across as being completely balanced. Or it may be that he does not want to come off as being a racist (unlike the late Iris Chang, who felt free to pull no punches in her scathing critique of Japan's China campaign). Without such intensity, 'Flyboys' comes across as a flaccid mess.
Stephen Ambrose meets Noam Chomsky February 23, 2006
Stephen Quinn (Huntington Beach, Ca)
19 out of 27 found this review helpful
Save your money. What masquerades as a portrait of the courage of our WW II flyers, turns out to be a hatchet job on the country they defended. I feel terrible for Pres. George H.W. Bush who was bamboozled into cooperating with Bradley in this project, (Bush was one of the pilots involved in the events depicted.) I'm sure he gagged when he read the finished product.
Bradley may just be jockeying to get a cushy professor's job. I can't imagine what else would motivate someone to dishonor the memory of the 400,000 American troops who died in World War II.
In his mind, there's no moral difference between the Imperial Japanese Army, which ran roughshod over East Asia, raping and beheading civilians by the thousand, and the US military which shed its blood to free those conquered peoples. Does he suppose Tojo planned to establish a democracy in China as MacArthur did in postwar Japan?
Bradley's father was among the Marines who raised the flag on Mt Suribachi. I hope for his sake that he's not still alive to read what his son has cooked up now.
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