FLYBOYS



I began reading an interesting book tonight entitled, Flyboys by author James Bradley. A couple of years ago, I read a book he wrote entitled, The Flags of Our Fathers, which was about the five soldiers who raised the flag on Iwo Jima - one of who was author Bradley's father.

Flyboys is about the heroic attemps made by the "flyboys" of WW2 over a tiny island in the Pacific named Chichi Jima to knock out the Japanese communication towers located on the island.

Bradley begins this book by giving a brief history lesson about the "ethnic cleansing" of the Native Americans by the early Americans and then goes into the history of Japan (which I'm finding are very curious subjects for me and believe it or not, Bradley ties it all together in a very significant way...). As the United State's "pioneers" ventured west, they eventually ended up on a tiny little island which sits in the middle of the Pacific Ocean - Chichi Jima. Chichi Jima sits just south of Iwo Jima.

During World War 2, Iwo Jima was known as the best place for landing strips in that area of the Pacific and Chichi Jima was known for its communication capabilities. Chichi Jima was to become a stopping station for US ships to stock back up on oil, etc... Well, this didn't make Japan very happy and as history tells us, they ended up (many years later) paying the US back very aggressively and then in turn got paid back themselves by the US VERY, VERY aggressively. All so interesting, sad, appalling and exciting. So far a good read...