Rating: 
Summary: Misleading title - two books in one
Review: I'm only about one third finished and am wondering if he's writing about WWII aviators or about European/ American expansionism over the last few hundred years, with plenty of blame on Chritianity for all the brutality that went with it. He even gets in a lick against Abe Lincoln for his supposed Indian hatred. He uses the first part of his book to paint a sorry picture of Western civilization. To be fair, he does also write about the Japanese brutalities in the 1930's against China. I intend to finish the book because he does have a good story to tell. However, any reader should be warned that you will subjected to some heavy anti- American and anti-Christian bias.
Rating: 
Summary: A GUT WRENCHING TALE WELL TOLD
Review: This is a great story about the place and development of air power by the U.S. in WW II. More specifically, it is about individual pilots, a little of their personal history andd their aircraft training and then a lot of information about the Japances during the war, their attitudes, and practices concerning their troops and officers. The information is most interesting and brutal plus unsettling at times. The devastation we wrought to Japan is incredible and all because of the airplane. If you are a history buff, aviation buff, WW II or whatever you will elnjoy this book.
Rating: 
Summary: US Bashing at its Highest.
Review: I actually couldn't get past the first three chapters because of the over-the-top characterization of the US being a totalitarian expansionistic culture. And the Japanese culture being far superior to not just the US but to every culture at the time. That is until the US showed up on their shores. And because of that encounter, led the Japanese to their own expansionistic ways ruining their society. I was actually skipping paragraphs to get to the actual meat of the book but I gave up in frustration. If you want a good blame the USA book, this is it. I guess I'll never know the real story behind the book. I plan on returning it today.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent Read
Review: I thought the book was great. It was fair and balanced and went into some excellent history to explain the Japanese perspective leading up to Pearl Harbor. Both sides were guilty of serious war crimes. The Japanese slaughter of the Chinese was 5x worse than what Hitler did, but is hardly spoken of. I highly recommend this book.
Rating:
Summary: History that needs to be told
Review: So many times you pick up a book which chronicles history, and it is the same thing. Repeating what has been written over and over for the past 50 years. Flyboys, by James Bradley, goes far beyond a typical history book. First off, this book takes you into the real lives of these brave Americans and places you in the conflict of the South Pacific in the early 1940s. You will also learn that this war was not about good guys and bad guys. You will shake your head in astonishment at what both sides did to each other. The Japanese seemed to base everything on their long history of isolationism and their culture while the Americans seemed to base their ultimate actions, the firebombing of Tokyo on a need to ultimately save lives. You can buy that argument but the end result, the brutal; devastation of Japan is hard to swallow. However, something had to be done and you are left thinking about those fateful decisions by Truman and his staff. This is an incredible red. If you care at all about who truly are our heroes, these flyboys, you will want this in your collection. I cringe to think that our kids look up to Kobe and company. The truth about George Bush senior and his colleagues needs to be told. These are our true heroes. This is a fantastic read! I am running to purchase other works by Bradley if they are anything like this.
Rating:
Summary: Fascinating but a little too PC
Review: Filled with fascinating information about the Japanese WW2 mind and the accomplishments of the Flyboys, but too many attempts at moral equivalence for my taste; while describing the horror perpetrated by the Japanese, the author constantly points a finger at the US either in blame or charging hypocrisy (though his description of Japanese inhumanity eventually overwhelms). While there may be some validity to these charges - and the author provides many examples of American butchery, all the way from the Native Americans to the Phillipines - some attempts are somewhat sickening. After describing the appalling butchery of POWs and other horrors practiced by the Japanese, and the outrage such savagery provoked here in the US, he describes some take-no-prisoners incidents perpetrated by the US, and wags his finger: "When U.S. prisoners were killed, it was 'murder ...' But when Americans murdered Others, 'they had it coming to them.'" Er ... excuse me, Bozo, but didn't you read what you just wrote? To wit, the behavior of the Japanese. Did it not occur to the author that their rejection of the Geneva Convention, brutal treatment (rape, murder and torture) of civilians, and other scummy actions, such as this: "The wounded wait until [US] men come up to examine them ... and blow themselves and the other fellow to pieces with a hand grenade" (p. 143) could somehow lead American soldiers to regard their enemies as subhuman monsters? I dunno, I think it's possible. Sure, they look different ... but they also behave different, and that's the key. How about slicing open living POWs and removing their lungs or stomachs, without anesthesia? Poking around in their brains with a knife and twisting to see what body parts jerk? When an enemy not only murders your POWs as a matter of policy and in explicit disregard of the rules of war, but has demonstrated that they will not surrender, will blow you to bits if you show compassion or try to help them, and have no regard whatsoever for any human life, not even civilians (not even their own), what do they expect? What does the author expect? Yet he constantly attempts to suggest that either side was just as bad. Elsewhere he reports that the Japanese justifiably regarded the American firebombers as devils. Yes, the napalming of Tokyo was horrible, but what did they expect after their sons' killing sprees - hacking hundreds of thousands of non-Japanese (Chinese, for example) to pieces, raping and killing and sometimes eating daughters of civilians, forcing children to become "comfort women", the dishonorable attack on Pearl Harbor, practicing bayoneting on live prisoners, spraying typhoid, etc. etc.? Does the glee American soldiers and the American public felt over killing such a subhuman enemy - proven so by their actions - become more understandable? Do the complaints of firebombing Japanese civilians seem to recede into the distance of their hypocrisy? The crucial difference is that these most of the Japanese atrocities were a matter of official policy or direct orders, as opposed to the visceral hatred engendered in individual American soldiers by witnessing the inhumanity of the Japanese military. It is well written, though, and you do get a sense of the heroism of the American military, warts and all - and the author does try to show us as many warts as he can. He is also candid about the horrors perpetrated by the Japanese, not only upon Others, but upon themselves. The analysis of how the Japanese got locked into a couple of different mindsets and how that led to their defeat is also interesting. And we learn a little more about the amazing heroism of pilots like George Bush Sr. When I was less informed (still reading TIME, Newsweek, and the Washington Post for news ... then I happened upon the Media Research Foundation), I chuckled with Oliphant's baseless ridiculing of Bush's war record. After reading this book, I cannot help but cheer him as a true hero. I would like to have given this book four stars or more but due to the above, which may further encourage Japan's whitewashing of their brutal history. (I don't have to worry about America's history being whitewashed; too much white guilt and self-loathing around here for that.) It is definitely worth a read, in spite of the author's attempts to be sensitive. Fortunately, these are infrequent. Yes, neither side is guiltless ... but neither do both sides bear equal guilt, by any means. The Japanese are so ashamed of their history that they have to rewrite it; they understand this. And, strangely, so does the author, quoting Paul Fussell after reminding us that more people were killed with samurai swords than atomic bombs: "The degree to which Americans register shock and extraordinary shame about the Hiroshima bomb correlates closely with lack of information about the Pacific war."
Rating: 
Summary: This is a tough read, but it is more than worthwhile
Review: Reading James Bradley's FLYBOYS is like watching Fox News Channel: both the book and the news channel have being "fair and balanced" as their goal, but reaching that goal is sometimes --- if not always --- a bit of a struggle. In the case of the book, the balance is between the Allied and Japanese fronts in World War II, and the author ends up trying very hard to make the Japanese case. Sure, the Japanese wanted to conquer East Asia and take over its population. But how is this any different, Bradley asks, from imperialist Europeans in the last century colonizing Africa and India? Sure, when the Japanese invaded Manchuria and put its people to the sword and herded its women into "comfort houses" of prostitution, this was bad. But American civilians killed defenseless Native Americans at the Sand Creek massacre and elsewhere --- what's the difference? And sure, there was the Pearl Harbor attack but the American response to that involved napalm attacks on the Japanese heartland that killed hundreds of thousands of civilians. However, the balance in FLYBOYS is much more carefully poised. The real horror of the book is war itself, and the nature of war doesn't differ much on either side of the conflict. Horrible things happen in war --- that's the way war is. Dwelling on the crimes of one side or the other just feeds the fires of conflict, years after the end of hostilities. Even the most terrible of war crimes, like what happened to eight stranded American Navy, Marine and Army Air Corps flyers on the remote Pacific island of Chichi Jima, must be understood as part of the overall wretched fabric of war. And what happened on Chichi Jima, you might ask? Well, now it can be told. The story of what happened to a small group of American naval aviators on the Japanese-held island of Chichi Jima was a long-held secret, buried amidst the flurry of war-crimes trials. Chichi Jima was something of a sideshow in the war, one of the Bonin Islands, near the vastly more famous Iwo Jima. Iwo Jima had room for an airstrip; Chichi Jima only had room for a massive radio complex, sending intelligence data back to Tokyo. That made it a secondary target, but a target nonetheless, and American bombers were tasked to destroy it. Anti-aircraft fire from the island brought down some American planes, and their surviving crew members parachuted to the island as prisoners of war. What happened next scarcely bears thinking about. Bradley does tell us about it eloquently and, most importantly of all, non-judgmentally. What happened to Jimmy Dye, Glenn Frazier, Floyd Hall, Marve Mershon, Dick Woelhof, Grady York, Warren Earl Vaughan, and the anonymous B-24 crewman who shared their fates is shocking --- so much so that even their families could not know the whole truth. It was certainly a violation of the Geneva Convention protecting the rights of prisoners of war. It was so awful that most of the Japanese soldiers had to be ordered to participate. What Bradley does well is to put what happened on Chichi Jima in context. By itself, in isolation, the story of the eight Americans on Chichi Jima is the stuff of nightmares. But Bradley deftly places it against the appropriate backdrop --- the conquest-drunk warlords in Tokyo, the misplaced code of bushido that led to fanatical nonsense, the American napalm attacks that burnt the heart out of metropolitan Japan, and the vain sacrifice of the emperor's "shattered jewels." FLYBOYS is a tough read, but it is more than worthwhile. Bradley balances his catalog of horrors with an admiring, appreciative look at the courage of the American flyers who won the war in the Pacific. FLYBOYS is a worthy testament to their efforts and their sacrifice. --- Reviewed by Curtis Edmonds
Rating:
Summary: Exceptional reporting and storytelling
Review: I almost did not buy this book because its title, "Flyboys," hinted it would be too "apple pie" patriotic. But, it is an unrelentingly real read loaded with fascinating facts and stories from original sources. I kept reading it all night long. I could not put it down! Brady taught me what the war with Japan was like - both from a geo-politic view and from the human view of soldiers and civilians on each side. Chapter after chapter filled in little known but very important facts about the war. It told how barbaric Japanese military officers turned Japan into an expansionistic nation of atrocities. It told how Yankee ingenuity led to the US's extensive firebombing of Japanese cities and the suffering it caused that was far more extensive than that of the atom bomb. It revealed Japan's detailed and horrible plans for millions of its citizens to use bamboo poles in a fight to their inevitable death. As its defenses crumbled and the allies were pressing in, the Japan military was training boys to be "Sherman rugs" by lying underneath tanks with bombs. It was even planning to drop millions of plague ridden fleas on US cities! Unlike most history books, Brady builds drama from chapter to chapter as characters on each side suffer brutally at each other's hands. War is hell, and books like this one confront us with the evils of war that horrific enough to be unbelievable, if they were not true. What surprised me most was the very brave and human side of George Bush. I knew the former president was pulled from the ocean after his plane crashed, but did not know of his extraordinary acts of courage and how the "survivor" guilt he still feels has kept him from exploiting his history for political gain. History is going to be very kind to this man
Rating:
Summary: Needs More Citations
Review: Overall, I thought this was a good book. I found the history of Japanese imperialism and the justification for American imperialism interesting, although both stories were full of generalizations. I suppose Mr. Bradley would need an entire textbook to thoroughly cover these subjects. One of the major flaws of the book was the lack of citations to go with some of the quotes - The reader is never told who said some of these things. This could lead someone to think that they were made up by the author. The book is gruesome in its details of Japanese treatment of POW's, but probably historically accurate. This is not a book for the squeamish.
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Summary: What does it mean to be civilized?
Review: There are already a billion one-sided war stories and movies about 'heroic American soldiers.' I'm glad this book isn't just another one of them. As stated by another reviewer, this book gives an important history of Japanese-American relations beginning before WWII. The most important thing I am getting form this book however, is not a history lesson. The question this book poses, is "what does it mean to be civilized?" Both Japan and the US claim to be civilized countries, yet they are both guilty of the most unthinkable brutal acts known to humanity. This book illustrates how evil mankind can be, no matter what their country of origin. I am reading another book right now called the Devil in White city about a psychopath serial killer. HH Holms murdered countless people with no remorse at all, and actually seemed to enjoy it. There are trueborn psychopaths, who can hurt others without feeling or remorse. They are thankfully un-common and generally not respected in our 'civilized' society. The fact that governments, (even our government) actually intentionally created people like Holms sickens me.
The Chinese government forbids its schools from teaching about the 1989 massacre in Tiananmen Square and even forbids discussion of the event, period. In our country, we do not teach what is covered in this book in the public schools, as far as I know. Thankfully, we are allowed freedom of speech in the US and therefore freedom to read what is this book. Yet so many Americans choose to blindly slap a "these colors don't run" bumper sticker on their car, and avoid American history that may make them feel uncomfortable. What kind of American are you?
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