Flags of Our Fathers

By James Bradley, Ron Powers



This was one of the highlights of the year. By chance I found this book at the airport. When I say found, that’s what I mean. Most of the time books let on board are given to the gate agent and they eventually work their way to lost and found, if they are not immediately returned. If the owner doesn’t come right back odds are pretty good that they will never claim to book. I got this copy (since given to my mom) from the lid of a trashcan down in the jetway. I guess the cleaners didn’t want to walk up to the top of the jetway to turn it in.

In high school I remember seeing the Iwo Jima memorial in person. It is a pretty moving statue. There are 6 men in the statue. I never really though about who they were. What was moving about it was that it depicted an event that really happened and the soldiers are for the most part anonymous. They could be anyone.

The book is written by the son of the longest lived of the men. Only three made it through the war. Except for John Bradley they lived kind of sad lives. Here were normal guys made famous for something they did on the spur of the moment but not made rich. They had normal problems like everyone else. I enjoyed how when reporters call John’s house he had told his family to always say he was vacationing and out of reach. He also never told his family about what he did in the war. The most he told his wife was a sentence about his time during the war on their first date and that was it. Kinda like my grandfather. Other then parachute training when he broke his back, he never mentions what he did. He’ll talk about visiting old neighbors interned in Manzanar but not about his job that got him on a memorial in Los Angeles.

In the Time Life Book World War II series covering Iwo Jima or Iwo To or Sulfur Island, they show the staged photo of the soldiers standing by the flag, everybody’s face visible. Joe Rosenthal who took the picture of the flag raising (it was second flag raising of the day that was the famous one.) He thought that this staged photo was the one that he was told was becoming famous across America. He didn’t think much of the flag raising everyone loved because it was the second time the flag was raised. A flag so big that every son of a bitch on the island could see it.

I’m going with the idea that the book accurately portrays all of the soldiers involved. But of the three who mad it out alive, the book shows John Bradley as the most perfect of men whit almost no problems while the other two really never amount to much. Sad? Yes. But that’s life.

The only bad part about Flags of our Fathers? Oh yes there is one and it’s a big one. I couldn’t read this book in public because I kept tearing up. I guess that’s the price you pay to read a great book.