Lasting Memorial for all Who Served | Flags of Our Fathers (Movie Tie-in Edition)

Overall a moving story | Flags of Our Fathers (Movie Tie-in Edition) | James Bradley, Ron Powers

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	• Flags of Our Fathers (Movie Tie-in Edition) James Bradley, Ron Powers Bantam, 2006 - 400 pages average customer review:based on 592 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

excelent book

this is one tear jerking look at a great moment in history. Be prepared to cry as you follow along with the tragic lives of these men.

Lasting Memorial for all Who Served

I personally love historical books and picked this one up for that reason. This is one of the best I have ever read.

It covers the lives of the 6 who raised the flag on Iwo Jima from their early childhoods up until death. What makes this such a good read, is that each person came from a different background that represents a segment of the US and each survivor handled the memory of war and the fame of the photo in different unique ways as expected.

The portion of the book that had the greatest impact on me though was the chapters covering the actual battle on Iwo Jima. I cannot imagine myself at the age of 21 experiencing the things these Marines went through. The book also had an impact because there was nothing special about any one of these six soldiers when compared to others on the island so when the reader realizes that these stories could be multiplied thousands of times, the respect level for the Marines on the island goes even higher.

From a literary perspective, the book reads very well and never gets bogged down with details but rather with stories about the people involved in the battle and war, which makes it much more easily to relate to and impacting on the reader.

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Overall a moving story

This book borderlines 4.5 stars. I can not begin to describe all the emotions it brought out in me. The only reason I downgraded it was because it was a bit repetitive. I love the line "The real heroes of Iwo Jima are those who died there", but really how many times did it need to be said? And this wasn't the only thing repeated throughout the book. I also felt it dragged in places. But, this book left me in awe of those brave men who fought and gave their lives on that tiny little island. And it gave me deep respect for those who battled it until their death after they left. The Photograph is such a part of American History, but to the soldiers that were there that "one" meant nothing. This book also made me wonder were that kind of patriotism has gone? I'm sure some people still feel it. But, not the country as a whole. I wonder what happened?

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The Long Shadow of War

Simply put, this is historical narrative writing at it's best.This terrific book tells the story of the six flag raisers in Joe Rosenthal's iconic Pulitzer-Prize winning photograph from Iwo Jima.The author James Bradley is the son of flag raiser John Bradley.Bradley shows how the men in the photograph were a cross section of small town America at the time.He clearly demonstrates how their fate tied into the larger story of Iwo Jima.Three of the six men were killed shortly after the photo was taken in the brutal fighting on the island.The battle scenes are unforgettable.But, this is more then a war story, this is a story of honor,horror, fame and it's price and the impact of war that goes on long after the shooting is over.It is a story of good and honest men catapulted into a terrible situation and how they dealt with it.Clearly the amazing characters were much more then just figures in one of the wars most memorable pictures.The opening when the Bradley family visits Iwo and the conclusion when the author remembers his dad and his reluctance to be called a hero along with his wanting to not talk about the war are enough to put a lump in the throat of Scrooge.This is realistic praise of the greatest generation.It shows their strengths and their flaws and it makes me miss my father even more.You will remember this book long after you are done reading. That generation had it's problems like we all do, but it faced incredible horror with a strength of character that this book captures.

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Fatal Shot

Iwo Jima, February 1945. As U.S. soldiers slog bloodily through the most intense engagement in World War II's Pacific theater, six are sent to the top of the barren island's highest point, Mount Suribachi, to plant an American flag large enough to be seen by their comrade Marines still fighting below.

Thanks to an AP photographer it got seen, alright.

History's "most recognized" photograph, James Bradley calls it, of the six sticking a pipe with a jerry-rigged Old Glory atop of it onto a mound of stones. His father, John, a Navy corpsman, was one of the six, yet barely spoke of the experience to anyone in his lifetime, including his family. In some ways, he was the image's only survivor. Three of the flag-planters didn't get off the island alive; while the other two had their lives turned sour by the magnitude of their celebrity.

Pressed about his experience, John would only say: "The heroes of Iwo Jima are the guys who didn't come back."

"Flags Of Our Fathers" is an enormously moving and vibrant account of the battle and a rumination on the cost of war on its survivors and their families. Occasionally burdened by the author's propensity to beat his chest a bit and wallow in some normal if excessive pride in his father's experience, the book's ever-human perspective and interest in the inexplicable vagaries of life give "Flags" real punch, and true readability whether or not the reader shares his nationality.

The AP photographer, Joe Rosenthal, nearly didn't go up the mountain that day. The famous frame, snapped in an instant before Rosenthal had a chance to see it in his viewfinder, let alone pose it as would be later alleged, rested in the camera between two other images that were both ruined by routine light exposure. For some reason, Bradley notes, the frame between was unscathed.

There was much deliberation on the identity of the six soldiers. One of them, Ira Hayes, didn't want to be identified at all. Another was misidentified; Hayes hitchhiked hundreds of miles to inform the man's mother her son was the man in the photo.

Bradley and co-author Ron Powers capture the tragedy and pathos of such moments quite well, and something else, too, the matter-of-fact nature of service and brotherhood that came so naturally to these men, to the point of shame about being singled out for such a small moment (1/400th of a second, Bradley keeps noting) amid weeks of struggle in their deadly hell.

To say "Flags" is a downer is not to deny its spirit-stirring power. The photo on Suribachi may have been a freak of circumstance, but it served to memorialize the battle's fallen in a way as eloquent as Lincoln's Gettysburg Address. The image survives today in many forms. Thanks to Bradley and Powers, you now see the flagraising in deeper, wider focus, and marvel at how well it holds up - even if its principals were not so pleased about being in the frame.

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In this unforgettable chronicle of perhaps the most famous moment in American military history, James Bradley has captured the glory, the triumph, the heartbreak, and the legacy of the six men who raised the flag at Iwo Jima. Here is the true story behind the immortal photograph that has come to symbolize the courage and indomitable will of America.

In February 1945, American Marines plunged into the surf at Iwo Jima?and into history. Through a hail of machine-gun and mortar fire that left the beaches strewn with comrades, they battled to the island's highest peak. And after climbing through a landscape of hell itself, they raised a flag.

Now the son of one of the flagraisers has written a powerful account of six very different young men who came together in a moment that will live forever.

To his family, John Bradley never spoke of the photograph or the war. But after his death at age seventy, his family discovered closed boxes of letters and photos. In Flags of Our Fathers, James Bradley draws on those documents to retrace the lives of his father and the men of Easy Company. Following these men's paths to Iwo Jima, James Bradley has written a classic story of the heroic battle for the Pacific's most crucial island?an island riddled with Japanese tunnels and 22,000 fanatic defenders who would fight to the last man.

But perhaps the most interesting part of the story is what happened after the victory. The men in the photo?three were killed during the battle?were proclaimed heroes and flown home, to become reluctant symbols. For two of them, the adulation was shattering. Only James Bradley's father truly survived, displaying no copy of the famous photograph in his home, telling his son only: "The real heroes of Iwo Jima were the guys who didn't come back."

Few books ever have captured the complexity and furor of war and its aftermath as well as Flags of Our Fathers. A penetrating, epic look at a generation at war, this is history told with keen insight, enormous honesty, and the passion of a son paying homage to his father. It is the story of the difference between truth and myth, the meaning of being a hero, and the essence of the human experience of war.

From the Hardcover edition.

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