Late in World War II, U.S. marines invaded Iwo Jima; an immortal flag-raising photograph of the event has been seen at one time or another by nearly every school child in the United States. At the same time, bombers from carrier task forces were relentlessly shelling Chichi Jima, a small island 150 miles away that held a radio communications center for the Japanese. During a series of attacks, nine pilotsAflyboysAwere shot down. One who was rescued by a U.S. submarine in a nearly miraculous operation was George H.W. Bush, who went on to become President of the United States. The eight others disappeared from history. Through interviews and a long search through U.S. and Japanese archives, Bradley was able to piece together the fates of these men. They all survived the parachuting and were picked up by the Japanese. They were disabused of the idea of international rules for prisoners of war as they were beaten and otherwise maltreated by the majority of their captors. Eventually, they were executed. This book is far more than a narrowly focused tale of heroism and brutality. Bradley instead takes the opportunity of delving into the cultures that formed the protagonists on Chichi Jima, Americans and Japanese alike. The vast historical sweep of this work makes it a genuine learning experience. Bradley's reading voice sounds deceptively young, and he is a decent narratorAit's hard to imagine that a professional reader could do it better, given the nature of the story. For modern history and World War II collections.ADon Wismer, Cary Memorial Lib., Wayne, ME (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

The author of Flags of Our Fathers achieves considerable but not equal success in this new Pacific War-themed history. Again he approaches the conflict focused on a small group of men: nine American Navy and Marine aviators who were shot down off the Japanese-held island of Chichi Jima in February 1945. All of them were eventually executed by the Japanese; several of the guilty parties were tried and condemned as war criminals. When the book keeps its eye on the aviators-growing up under a variety of conditions before the war, entering service, serving as the U. S. Navy's spearhead aboard the fast carriers, or facing captivity and death-it is as compelling as its predecessor. However, a chapter on prewar aviation is an uncritical panegyric to WWI aerial bombing advocate Billy Mitchell, who was eventually court-martialed for criticizing armed forces brass. More problematic is that Bradley tries to encompass not only the whole history of the Pacific War, but the whole history of the cultures of the two opposing countries that led to the racial attitudes which both sides brought to the war. Those attitudes, Bradley argues, played a large role in the brutal training of the Japanese army, which led to atrocities that in turn sharpened already keen American hostility. Some readers' hackles will rise at the discussion of the guilt of both sides, but, despite some missteps, Bradley attempts to strike an informed balance with the perspective of more than half a century. And with a CNN prime-time documentary to air at publication and a 25-city author tour, he should have no trouble reaching all comers. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Bradley's phenomenal best-seller, Flags of Our Fathers (2000), was rejected by about 20 publishing houses before Bantam took a chance. His new publisher is not leaving the popularity of the encore to chance, launching it with an intense promotional campaign. Structured similarly to Flags, which concerned the flag-raisers of Iwo Jima, this work reconstructs the lives of several young men at war. Eight pilots and airmen were shot down by the Japanese military at Chichi Jima in 1944-45, George H. W. Bush among them. A well-known part of his political biography, Bush's story of escape is recounted somberly (Bush's crewmates died). The fates of the others shot down, who were captured, Bradley gathered in part from a source that was secret until a few years ago: records of a war-crimes trial of Japanese officers in command at Chichi Jima. Bradley sensitively builds the trial's unpleasant evidence (concealed, presumably, to spare pain to the airmen's relatives) into the narrative, which he frames with a portrayal of the Japanese military mind-set, which condoned the commission of atrocities. There are many brutally graphic passages about the torture and slaying of the American prisoners, which may prove too daunting for some readers, but Bradley succeeds in restoring dignity to the American airmen. Sure to command a large audience. --Gilbert Taylor Copyright 2003 Booklist

An episodic account of a little-covered arena in the much-covered genre of WWII: close air combat in the war against Japan. Bestselling Bradley (Flags of Our Fathers, 2001) renders due homage to the exploits of long-distance bomber crews in the Pacific campaign, and particularly the Doolittle Raid on Tokyo in 1942, the net effect of which, along with 90-odd burned buildings, was that "Japanese belief in their invincibility had been rudely shaken." At the same time, half a year after Pearl Harbor, Americans got a good morale boost out of the bombing, and young men rushed to become flyers--who were already, thanks to Charles Lindbergh and company, perceived as "the coolest of the cool." Bradley's account centers on the new crop of pilots, many of them teenagers when the war broke out, who piloted fighters and dive bombers against the Japanese in the last two years of the war. Most famous of the nine men he treats in detail is George H.W. Bush, who was shot down over the island of Chichi Jima in 1944, but not before delivering his payload of bombs. Bush survived, was awarded a Distinguished Flying Cross for his heroism under fire, and went on, of course, to the White House. Bush's eight fellow pilots were not so lucky: they were captured, and treated so brutally that the US Navy effectively whitewashed their story, offering only a censored version of events to their families while executing many of the Japanese captors for their war crimes. Bradley writes vigorously, if graphically, about torture, beheading, disemboweling, and other unpleasant realities of POW life on Chichi Jima, though he takes great care to air those events from the Japanese point of view, one that equated surrender with dishonor and that did not honor the Geneva Convention. Yet, American pilots acknowledged, they, too, behaved similarly in the name of duty. Said one survivor, wisely, "I believe any culture can be indoctrinated into any attitude that the leaders want to teach them." A memorable portrait of men in battle. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.