Rating: 
Summary: I Would Give It Zero Stars If I Could
Review: I am so disappointed with this book. I don't need to explain why because other reviewers have already articulated all the reasons very well.However, I was expecting something much better from Bradley because of his earlier great work, "Flags of Our Fathers." I've given that book as a gift more than any other book. I wondered why CNN presented a special about this book on their network since it involves former President Bush. Now, I know why; they would want to support a book that falsely justifies the worst atrocities committed against man - the Japanese against the POWs - on America. How sick is that? The Japanese military culture, which supported "bushido" (way of the warrior) and all its shortcomings, was a modern culture never the less (remember this was the 20th century). Yet, they couldn't understand why their enemy would surrender. Since the enemy surrendered, then the Japanese soldier could brutalize the POW in any fashion that he fancied. James Bradley is a major embarrassment. I will never give "Flag of Our Fathers" as a gift again since I now know Bradley's hidden agenda. Sad, isn't it? His father was the last surviving flag raiser at Iwo Jima and look what his son has done now. DO NOT BUY FLYBOYS!
Rating: 
Summary: An important account
Review: . Flyboys is an excellent book that contains an
important account that should be read. This book and its author was brought to my attention
by a friend who heard of such on a TV show. A rare discovery. At the close of the 2003, Flyboys enjoys an Amazon
sales rank of 108 out of the hundreds of thousands, if
not millions, of the books that are for sale on Amazon. Much of the Japanese behavior in WWII is inexcusable. The book addresses the dangers of extreme nationalism
and the danger it can lead too. The genesis of Flyboys is about secret trials regarding
events hidden on Chichi Jima, not far from Iwo Jima,
during WWII. A number of Japanese officers on Chichi Jima are cannibals,
and their favorite cuisine were American prisoner of war
captives. The secret trials, held on Guam, doesn't make a lot
of sense unless taken into the broader context of WWII. George Bush, the 41st President of the United States, almost
ended up on their dinner table. The Pacific has a history of atrocities that propagate further
atrocities. The cycle of atrocities continues. It shouldn't be a surprise that Americans were involved in
various atrocities in the Pacific region. To say otherwise
is to lie when it is unnecessary. That is history. To call Japan's radical WWII military leadership "Spirit
Warriors" is justifiable, as they forgot lessons learned in
the previous war with Russia and they over-emphasized
the spirit in a modern industrial technological war. The false Bushido code practiced in Japan during WWII
carries a warning for many other societies now drunk with
power.
The book Flyboys 0316105848 deserves to be read more
than once. Other books that should be read along with Flyboys are:
Downfall 0141001461 and Flags of Our Fathers 0553111337.
Rating:
Summary: Disappointing
Review: What a disappointing, bizarre and almost un-American book this was. To start off with, my back ground is 10 years ex Naval aviation and the term "Flyboy" is not a flattering term I would use to describe me or any of my comrades and the author uses this term through out the entire book as if it were an honorary title or rank to be used in front of each veterans name. The book is written at a grade school level as if it were attempting to give a quick history lesson leading up to WWII and takes almost the first 3rd of the book to get to the real story, which leads me up to my biggest complaint about this book. The author uses obscure incidents and wars as well as unverified single sources to paint a picture of America as an evil imperial power that went around killing innocent people (In the Philippines) as the rule instead of the exception and the last time I checked my history books many thousands of American lives were lost "liberating" the Philippines in the fall of 1944 as well as hundreds more in Iraq to this day so I take offense to his twisting of history. The author sucked me in with the fancy book cover and catchy title into thinking I was about to learn more about some of the missing pieces of the vast puzzle that is WWII but instead was subjected (granted I could have stopped reading) to a liberal political correct story of how these American veterans deserved their fates because of past American actions. For people interested in learning about past American veterans try the "Medal Of Honor" book by Peter Collier and you will defiantly walk away feeling much more inspired with the human spirit. I feel the best books about veterans are generally those written by veterans and this author should think of a possible new career as a fiction writer and leave the history telling to others. Anybody want to buy my book?<smile>
Rating: 
Summary: Bias comes through
Review: As a former student at military war colleges, I agree with all of the well written reviews that see the book as biased against the United States. There is no way Japanese historical atrocities can be excused away by American history, period. The book should have been focused on Chichi Jima as Flags of Our Fathers was on Iwo Jima, but is cluttered by the author's yet unseen agenda. Regardless, it is a heart-wrenching story of warfare and it's ugliness.
Rating:
Summary: Did Bradley actually write ALL of this book?
Review: Other reviewers have pointed out the numerous factual errors in this account, as well as the fact that the central story of the downed airmen is a minor part of the tale. It seemed to me that there also is more than one writing style on display here. The "back story" and the "Flyboys" section appear to have been written by different people. I have to wonder if Bradley's editors at Little, Brown, didn't "bookend" the rather thin Chichi Jima story produce a 338 page book, and added more than a dollop of political correctness in the process.
Rating: 
Summary: Emphasis Off Track
Review: I agree with other reviews that Bradley strayed too far from the story in trying to give us a synopsis of what led up to and surrounded WWII in the Pacific. Students of military history would have prefered more attention to the Chichi Jima trials that followed the war's end than to Billy Mitchell's past.
Rating:
Summary: Flyboys is an Excellent Book
Review: . Flyboys is an excellent book that contains an important
account that should be read. The genesis of Flyboys is about secret trials regarding
events hidden on Chichi Jima, not far from Iwo Jima,
during WWII. A number of Japanese officers on Chichi Jima are cannibals,
and their favorite cuisine were American prisoner of war
captives. The secret trials, held on Guam, doesn't make a lot
of sense unless taken into the broader context of WWII. George Bush, the 41st President of the United States, almost
ended up on their dinner table. The Pacific has a history of atrocities that propagate further
atrocities. The cycle of atrocities continues. It shouldn't be a surprise that Americans were involved in
various atrocities in the Pacific region. To say otherwise
is to lie when it is unnecessary. That is history. To call Japan's radical WWII military leadership "Spirit
Warriors" is justifiable, as they forgot lessons learned in
the previous war with Russia and they over-emphasized
the spirit in a modern industrial technological war. The false Bushido code practiced in Japan during WWII
carries a warning for many other societies now drunk with
power.
The book Flyboys 0316105848 deserves to be read more
than once. Other books that should be read along with Flyboys are:
Downfall 0141001461 and Flags of Our Fathers 0553111337.
Rating:
Summary: a disappointing account of an atrocity
Review: I was hugely disappointed with this book. Jet fuel spills on carrier decks. Engines stall in mid-air. Singapore falls before China gets raped. B-25 bombers are called Billys. Roosevelt is called the Dutchman; Hirohito, the Boy Soldier; and American flyers of course are Flyboys, on almost every page. Casualties are confused with fatalities. Aerial warfare takes place in the third dimension, land warfare in the first, and naval warfare in the second. On page 141, 800 Japanese on Attu Island made a suicide charge upon American troops; on page 143, the number is 2,350. Japanese pilots become "another notch in a Flyboy's belt." Bradley's technique seems to have been to find the most startling book--in English--on a subject, then to borrow heavily from it. Often enough he doesn't bother to rewrite the excerpts; he throws quotation marks around them and inserts them into his text without saying where they're from. I generally read a book like this with my right index finger in the citations page; in this case, it's the only way to know whom he's quoting. He abuses statistics in a remarkable way: he says that American soldiers during the pacificiation of the Philippines earlier in the century killed 7,000 locals a month, then declares that "Hitler and Tojo combined, with all their mechanized weaponry, killed the same per month." Huh? Hitler and Tojo killed a *million* people a month, of whom 7,000 happened to be American. It's the same with his analogies: sure, the Japanese murdered a few prisoners, but what about Americans who sank Japanese transports, then machine-gunned the survivors in the water? To Bradley, these are similar atrocities, rather overlooking the fact that soldiers in the water become combatants if they got ashore. Killing them wasn't pretty, but it wasn't a war crime. Even the cannibalism on Chichi Jima isn't as unknown as he makes out. I read about it long ago in Lord Russell's *Knights of Bushido*. Indeed, the most eye-popping bit of evidence in *Flyboys* (a formal order to produce the flesh of an American pilot for a battalion feast) is lifted from Russell's book. Bradley did do some original research. He walked the ground on Chichi Jima--always a good idea, but one seldom pursued by historians--and best of all he interviewed some of the Japanese survivors, including one of the cannibals. Surely he could have made a book out of this material without the foolish Flyboys, Billys, and Dutchmen, and without the strained efforts to show that the Japanese, if no better than the Americans, were at least no worse. It might have been a shorter book, but it would have been a better one. -- Dan Ford
Rating:
Summary: Review of "Flyboys"
Review: A truly scholarly work. The author has done extensive research and combined the same into a spellbounding true story, with fascinating facts of which I was never before aware.
This is art at its best.
Rating:
Summary: Who's more vicious? U.S. or Japan? Japan wins by a mile!
Review: Author Bradley rightly reminds readers that America is not without historical sin. However, the barbaric nature of the Imperial Japanese "Spirit Warriors," and the fanatical, "die to the last man, woman, and child" attitude of the entire Japanese nation, leads me to the conclusion that napalming and nuking Japanese cities was the only way to stop the war that Japan started. How sad to read of the fate of the Flyboys of Chichi Jima. What brave men they were. And, what a great tribute this book is to former President George H. Bush.
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