The book has been out for several years now and on my shelf for the past two (I could say the same for too many of the books sitting on my shelf that are as yet unread), but I was finally ready to read it. Frankly, I had little idea of what it was about – except that it had to do with WW2.

For those of you who, like me, have not seen the movie Flags of our Fathers, and may be unfamiliar with the book – here’s what you need to know. First off, it’s a non-fiction account of the Battle of Iwo Jima and, more specifically, six men who fought in that battle and have been immortalized in Joe Rosenthal’s famous photograph of the flagraising on Mt Suribachi. The author James Bradley is the son of one of the flagraisers, Navy Corpsman John Bradley.

The narrative of the story gives a great account of the Battle of Iwo Jima as well as the background of the lives of the six flagraisers at Mt Suribachi. The second half of the book is dedicated to following the lives of the three flagraisers who survived the bloodiest battle of World War II as they served the purposes of the war effort and struggled to rebuild their lives after the war and after the photograph.

The author focuses especially on his father and how John Bradley and the others never managed to fully escape the notoriety and memories that came from their role in that brief 1/400th of a second captured forever on film (and later in stone, bronze, and forever in our national consciousness).

As far as histories go, this book does a fantastic job of detailing, from both a larger military perspective, and a very personal perspective, the battle of Iwo Jima. After reading this book, my respect for the men who served there has increased beyond what I could have imagined. Bradley and Powers also do a great job at putting the battle in it’s military and historical context. Had the US Marines not taken Iwo Jima and its airstrips, US Air Corps bombers could never have dropped the bombs that brought the war to a swift conclusion. The authors even explain official estimates from that time that projected hundreds of thousands of American, British, and Australian lives that would have been lost had the allies attempted a land invasion of the Japanese mainland.

As a personal story, readers will be touched by the extreme tragedy of Iwo Jima and the memories that its veterans lived (and still live) with for the rest of their lives. One begins to understand why men like John Bradley often refused to re-open that chapter of their life by talking about that battle (despite the fame, decorations, and notoriety that it brought him).

If you like history, particularly military or WW2 history, you will enjoy this book. If history is not your thing, or you have trouble reading about war, you might take a pass on this one.
Being both a history buff and an aficionado of all things military, I give this book four of five stars.