Taylor Winter Mr. Dittmar American History Book Report 5 March 2015 I read Flyboys by James Bradley. The book is written from James’ viewpoint. He also wrote a book called Flags of Our Fathers. That book was about six Iwo Jima flag raisers, one of them being the authors father. Flyboys starts out as James explains his reasoning for writing the book. James was interested in writing another book and thought that this was the topic for him. One of James’ friends, Iris Chang, also an author, suggests he go to Iowa and visit a man named Bill Doran. James goes to Iowa in search of much needed information. When Bill Doran had been much younger, he was ordered to attend a trial held for the secret war crimes. Many years later when the trial became …show more content…
The government had ruled the matter of death of these men far too gruesome and awful for the families to be told of it. Every mother of each of the Flyboys died without knowing the brave journeys of their sons. James felt that those men wanted their experiences to be explained. No one knew exactly what happened to the eight men on Chichi Jima. He knew that he now understood what those mothers were never told and he had to share it with others. This book was a story of war, therefore, this is also a story of death. Although certainly not an adventure of defeat. The flyboys story was just a huge unfathomable secret, like an enormous black hole. They embarked on an unknown quest to complete their mission of war. This labels them as nothing lower than heroes. Japan thought of the outside world primarily as a military threat due to an American commodore. China had been sucked dry of its oil by foreign merchants. The Dutch overthrew Indonesian governments; the French ruled Vietnam along with Laos and Cambodia. Japan saw that Americans had slaves working their land and bringing free labor, ethnically cleansing campaigns against native Indians, and feasting on their recently won riches from the invasion of Mexico. Americans were full of greed in Japan’s eyes. Because of all this, Japan decided that their main priority should be to build an unstoppable military. This is what stopped the eight men of Chichi