Rating: 
Summary: Descriptive documentary on torture
Review: I have always been fascinated by history. However, this book is totally grossing me out and I don't think it's necessary. All I need to know is that there were lots of beheadings and lots of rape and even some cannibalism involved. That would have been enough to fill one page, not a whole book. There's not much about the relationships between the fly boys except that they didn't talk about their commrades who went down or were captured. It had my attention throught the first half of the book and now I've been saturated with enough. I'm 3/4 of the way through it and just hit a spot that was so gross that I'm not going to finish it.
Rating:
Summary: Hidden Agenda - Misleading Title
Review: After reading, "Flag of Our Fathers", I became wary of the author's apologist leanings. I did not purchase "Flyboys", and upon reading it after receiving it as a gift, was glad I had not spent the money. The book does deal with courageous "flyboys", but it also spends a lot of time contextualizing the viciousness of the Japanese during WWII. First, I didn't want to read about how justified the Japanese were in their treatment of our POW's. I wanted to read a book about our fliers in the Pacific theater. Second, I don't buy into the apologist's theory and believe that its advancement is particularly dangerous and counterproductive in today's war environment. Extrapolating the logic of the book, the terrorists can certainly be excused for killing western civilians, which is exactly the position of the peoples and nations that harbor our enemy today. Buying this book patronizes the enemy of this country.
Rating: 
Summary: Simply Incredible
Review: This book is one of the finest books ever written on the Pacific War and I have read many. It moved me to tears on multiple occasions. The negative reviews all have the same theme in that they seem to feel US actions examined here are given unfair treatment. The bottom line is that you can't argue with the facts and statistics he presents concerning American actions. These negative reviewers are at odds with the architect of the fire bombing itself, Curtis LeMay who knows they would have been found guilty of war crimes had we lost (not to mention many senior military officials of the time that were against these actions).You can argue the rights, wrongs and perceptions of these events, but that does not change the fact that they occurred. Anyway, like E.B. Sledges' "With the Old Breed", this is war at it's very worst and should serve as warning to those who continue with militiristic thinking.
Rating: 
Summary: Terribly researched, dismally written
Review: In his first marvelous work, Flags of Our Fathers, Bradley must have received a lot of help from his co-author Ron Powers. That book was compelling and insightful. Going it alone this time, his new work is neither...in fact, it's a huge propaganda campaign aimed to woo the friends of his youthful Japanese study period. In his first book, Bradley recounts an incident with his father where he's deriding the Americans in WWII and praising the Japanese...not knowing what his father had endured, and what the Japanese had done to his father's best friend on Iwo Jima. He acknowledged in the book his immensely naive and offensive (to his veteran father) opinions. THE LESSON DIDN'T STICK, because he's done it again, this time playing pseudo-historian in his attempts to paint Americans as culpable for the Japanese attitudes and behaviors. Reprehensible is the term that comes to mind as one reads his poorly researched diatribes. One need only check the back of the book to discover that Bradley read one or two opinionated books in an area and used their views as comprehensive histories to support his own pre-formed opinions. After "Fathers" I had Bradley on a must-read list. Now he's moved to the "never again" list...this book is that bad. Its a shame too, because the sacrifice of the men he purports to make the center of his account are used for his own selfish campaign, a literary crime of immense insensitivity. He owes the families of the Flyboys a stark and unqualified apology.
Rating: 
Summary: Relentless
Review: Bradley overuses the word "flyboy"- at least 1 million times. It reminds me of the Dizzy Gillespie song "Salt Peanuts". You go along for the ride, and there it is "Salt Peanuts. Salt Peanuts." You go along with Bradley and there it is "Flyboy. Flyboy." How about "Pilot" or "Aviator"? It's distracting. I can only imagine Bradley must have won a round of rock/paper/scissors with his editor to be able to include it as many times as he did. Other than that, a compelling gut-wrenching read.
Rating:
Summary: Great read for the "blame America first" crowd...
Review: I really loved Flag of Our Fathers. An excellent book from cover to cover. I found myself thinking of my grandfather with pride and thankfulness when reading Bradley's account of his own father. Flyboys had to be good, right? Wrong. I'm only 80 pages in and have yet to come across the subject of the title. Instead I've been treated to a "hate America" diatribe of epic proportions. If Bradley loves (or even likes) his country, he hides it well. He's hidden his "America is the great white devil" agenda in the sheep's clothing of pretending to be a tribute to American courage. I hope the book gets good soon, otherwise I may not have the intellectual stomach to read the rest of it. If you buy this book, skip at least the first 80 pages.
Rating:
Summary: If Bradley's Father Were Alive, . . .
Review: I think he'd have few words for his son. And they wouldn't be kind words. After having read
"Flags of Our Fathers" and enjoying it immensely, I was expecting something of similar
flavor and feeling with Flyboys. (Disclosure: I've only read the first 10 chapters.) In a book that delves deeply into the background of Japanese and American fighting rather
than focusing on the Flyboys, speaks of the ill-formed ideologies of both countries (he
seems to lump all religions, particularly Christianity, into the same boat with those who
used religion as a cover to their demonic hatred), Bradley tries to speak to both sides of
the Pacific, but ends up winning no one over. He compares Japanese atrocities of war and
all of their barbaric conquests to those made by Americans (YES, there is some truth to
this), but then goes on and on in chapter 10 "Yellow Devils, White Devils" about how we
Americans are nothing like them. The patriotic language and tone in chapters 4, 7 and 8 (Billy Mitchell's prophesying, intro
to the Flyboys, and the Doolittle Raid) contrast sharply with the other of the first ten
chapters. So far, I am left wondering what the real message is. Are we Americans just like them? We
ALL knew about the slaughtering going on during WWII by American Soldiers, didn't we? We
are ALL guilty of the atrocities, or are at least lead to feel guilty. I do feel awful
about how we treated the Native Americans, Mexicans, Japanese, and any others who were "not
like us", but that doesn't mean that the Japanese were justified in THEIR torturing and
killing (and eating) of defenseless POWs. Our soldiers were just like theirs weren't they? The Marines that fought with Bradley's
father on Iwo were just like the Japanese. The men whose motto was "No Man Left Behind"
were the same as the men who killed themselves instead of surrendering. The same as the men
who killed their own wounded comrades so as not to divert resources from the fight. America is just like Japan, isn't it? Or maybe it's worse? I mean, Bradley even goes so far
as to allude to the idea that Abraham Lincoln was a white supremacist. (Uh, remember the
Civil War?) O.K, so we're just like them. We're all murderers, all guilty. But wait.
Chapter 10. We're nothing like them! Which is it? My only guess for why Bradley did this is that while wanting to tell the world what
happened to the Flyboys on Chichi Jimi, he did not want to offend those who had been so
helpful in contributing to the book, namely the Japanese (veterans) whose stories made the
book complete. I'm sure Bradley has made friendships with some of them over the past few
years. There's nothing wrong with that, but what about the perspective of the Flyboys? What
about the Marines on Iwo, Guadalcanal, and everywhere else? What about Bradley's father?
What about their perspective? My message is this. America is a land like no other. The 50 states of which it's comprised
are like no other country in the history of the world and, I can only guess, like no other
country will ever be. America's ends do not justify the means, but the means do not negate
the glorious freedom that we have as a whole. There is still hatred and killing and racism,
but that shouldn't diminish the good we can do and have done. I wish I could re-write some
of America's history. I wish we had been more understanding of differences. I wish we had
been more willing to forgive. But to say that America has no right to be angry over what
happened on December 7th, 1941 or to even elude to that idea, is a slap in the face to all
who so willing joined the cause, without compulsion, and sacrificed their yesterdays, so
that we could have our todays. If it had not been for them -- every single one of them --
we'd probably be reading this in Japanese. Or German. Or, more likely, not at all. I doubt there are many Americans who would gladly give up their citizenship in this country
for that of any other.
Rating:
Summary: Grim Story, Annoyingly Told
Review: James Bradley's "Flyboys" recounts the terrible fate of several American WWII aviators, but it does so in an annoying and often distorted manner that distracts from his main theme. The central story, of the Chichi Jima atrocities, is in some ways a microcosm of the way the Japanese fought the Pacific War. Mr. Bradley does a fitting job of memorializing the suffering of the captive American flyers. However, Mr. Bradley weakened his book by attempting to use American depredations against the American Indians and Filipinos to give some context or counterbalance to the way Japan fought WWII, including their penchant for officially sanctioned atrocities. While much of what he wrote about US history in the late 19th and early 20th centuries was true as far as it went, the story was too complex to be subjected to his abbreviated treatment. As one example of that complexity, while the US Army was suppressing what we erroneously called the Philippine "insurrection," it was also building schools and bringing in American civilian schoolteachers, the so-called "Thomasites," to begin the first universal education system in Philippine history. Mr. Bradley desperately needed an editor who not only knows Japanese but could also rein in his numerous rhetorical quirks. He repeatedly misspells "gaijin" (as gaizin); Kempetai (as kempetei); Taihei (as Taihai), and so on. Just because he chooses to call all US aviators flyboys, must he call the Japanese "spirit boys" in an allusion to "Yamato damashii" or Japanese spirit? Why translate "kamikaze" as "god winds" rather than the more common (and grammatical) "divine wind(s)? The Japanese called Commodore Perry's fleet "black ships of evil mien" not "black ships of evil men," as Bradley writes more than once. Also, how did the very well-known General Tomoyuki Yamashita wind up in this book with the given name "Hirofumi?" When it comes to the US side, why does Mr. Bradley consistently call the B-25 Mitchell bomber the "Billy?" I've known a lot of WWII aviators (including my father) but Mr. Bradley is the first to call the B-25 that. Equally oddly, he repeatedly calls General LeMay "Curtis." And because of the author's singular focus on the role of "flyboys" in Japan's defeat, one would not imagine how crucial US Navy submarines were to that objective. On the larger picture Mr. Bradley tries to address, John Dower in "War Without Mercy" did full justice to the horrors produced in the US-Japan arena of war, horrors deriving in large part from the mutual perception of the enemy as alien devils. I doubt, however, that survivors of the March 9-10 Tokyo firebomb raid would have been better off trading places with citizens of Hamburg or Dresden, people who were much more "like us," but who were nonetheless incinerated in their tens of thousands by US and British bombs. Mr. Bradley could have written a much better book if he had had a stronger editor and had resisted the temptation to load the book with more freight than it could hold.
Rating:
Summary: Not Politically Correct - It's HISTORY
Review: I am astounded at reviewers claiming this book to be ruined for its Politically Correct content. Bradley manages to do something that is rare in a history book - maintain perspective and balance. There is nothing PC about recounting the atrocities against civilians whether by Japanese or American hands. At no point does he try to equate them. Quite to the contrary, he makes it clear that the fire bombing of civilians in Japan was brought about by the proximity of workers and factories, that the atomic bomb *saved* lives, and that, by the numbers, the Japanese killed far more civilian non-combatants than did the Americans. Where he records American misdeeds, I believe he does so with the integrity of facts, not with some overarching political agenda. This is a book that manages to give you perspective and understanding about *why* things happened as they did. It is not
some left-wing screed or Chomskyesque attack on America (Chomsky doesn't write this well). Read this book for yourself - ignore the politically insecure who did not like it. A solid A+ book
Rating:
Summary: Scriptures from the World of the Politically Correct
Review: There should be a warning on this book that it was written by a religous fanatic. In this case it is the Church of the Politically Correct (is there a more dogmatic or intolerant church?). The first five chapters have nothing to do with WW2 but instead lays the basis for the atrocities of WW2 as being a consequence of the way white, Christian men treated the American Indian. (While the Church of the PC does not belive in evil, they do believe that something very close to it comes from white, Christian men.) By chapter 6, the story picks up a bit except for the continuous moral equivalence of "we were really bad too". For true believers, this book is essential dogma. For the rest of us, it is a task of seperating fact from scripture
| 
