Flags of Our Fathers

May 1, 2001
Newly adapted from a bestseller for adults, Flags of Our Fathers: Heroes of Iwo Jima by James Bradley with Ron Powers, adapted by Michael French, focuses on one of the most famous of war photographs: the image of six marines raising the American flag on Iwo Jima. Bradley, son of one of those marines, investigates the lives (and deaths) of the six, closely examining their experiences to detail the brutal battle on the island, the contrast between the sense of victory projected by the photograph and the more ambiguous circumstances behind it, and the bond-raising value of the photo (and of its surviving subjects) to the Treasury Department. A photo insert adds to the immediacy of this memorable work.

May 1, 2000
Say "Iwo Jima," and what comes to mind? Most likely a famous photograph from 1945: six tired, helmeted Marines, fresh from a long, terrifying and bloody battle, work together to raise the American flag on Mount Suribachi. Bradley's father, John, was one of the six. In this voluminous and memorable work of popular history mixed with memoir, Bradley and Powers (White Town Drowsing) reconstruct those Marines' experiences, and those of their Pacific Theater comrades. The authors begin with the six soldiers' childhoods. Soon enough, bombs have fallen on Pearl Harbor, and by May '43 the young men have become proud leathernecks. Bradley and Powers incorporate accounts of specific battles, like "Hellzapoppin Ridge" (Bougainville, December '43), and pull in corps life and lore, from the tough-minded to the slightly silly, from mandatory penis inspections (medics checking for VD) to life in the pitch-dark of "Tent City No. 1." And they cover the strategy and tactics leading up to the awful battle for the island--the navy's disputed plans for offshore bombardment, cut at the last minute from 10 days to three; the 16 miles of Japanese underground tunnels, far more than Allied intelligence expected. A quarter of the book follows the fighting on Iwo Jima, sortie by sortie. The final chapters pursue the veterans' subsequent lives: Bradley and Powers set themselves against often-sanctimonious tradition, retrieving the stories of six more or less troubled individuals from the anonymity of heroic myth. A simple thesis emerges from all the detail worked into this touching group portrait, in a comment by John Bradley: "The heroes of Iwo Jima are the guys who didn't come back." No reader will forget the lesson.

June 16, 2003
PW
called this volume, adapted from a bestseller for adults, a "memorable work," as it focuses on one of the most famous of war photographs: the image of six Marines raising the flag on Iwo Jima. The author, son of one of those Marines, investigates the lives (and deaths) of the six. Ages 12-up.

February 1, 2000
The story of those six young American flag raisers in the famed portrait of Iwo Jima, told by the son of one of the soldiers.

Copyright 2000 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from March 1, 2000
The picture of the flag-raising on Iwo Jima in 1945 may be the most famous photograph of the twentieth century. Its fame was immediate, and immediately hitched to the wagon of publicity. The president summoned home the soldiers pictured to promote the government's final bond drive of World War II. After some confusion, the men were identified, but only three of the six flag-raisers survived the Battle of Iwo Jima. The survivors became celebrities. Bradley, the son of corpsman John Bradley, probes the nature of heroism--its appearance versus the reality. The reality was what happened on Iwo Jima: an 84 percent casualty rate inflicted on the flag-raisers' unit, Company E of the Second Battalion of the Twenty-eighth Regiment of the Fifth Division of the U.S. Marine Corps. In the course of his narrative, Bradley reconstructs Easy Company's war, starting with background material on the men, proceeding to their enlistment in the marines (the navy, in Bradley's case), training, landing on Iwo Jima, and fighting for Mount Suribachi, capped by the fluke of the photograph. The artifice of the bond drive elevated the survivors, who regarded their actions (if they spoke of them at all) as unworthy of being elevated above those of the marines who died. A riveting read that deals with every detail of the photograph--its composition, the biographies of the men, what heroism is, and the dubious blessings of fame. The depth of Bradley's research and the fluidity of his prose are reminiscent of another author's reconstruction of a relative's fate during the last days of World War II, "Wings of Morning" by Thomas Childers (1995), which cracked the top-10 best-sellers' list, as will Bradley's powerful book. ((Reviewed March 1, 2000))(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2000, American Library Association.)