Flags of Our Fathers

by Bradley, James; Powers, Ron

• ISBN13: 9781568959580
• ISBN10: 1568959583
• Edition: Large
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2000-11-01
• Publisher: Wheeler Pub Inc

Summary

In February 1945, American Marines plunged into the surf at Iwo Jima - and into history. Through a hail of machine-gun and mortar fire that left the beaches strewn with comrades, they battled to the island's highest peak. And after climbing through a landscape of hell itself, they raised a flag. Now the son of one of the flag-raisers has written a powerful account of six very different young men who came together in a moment that will live forever. To his family, John Bradley never spoke of the photograph or the war. But after his death at age seventy, his family discovered closed boxes of letters and photos. In Flags of Our Fathers, James Bradley draws on those documents to retrace the lives of his father and the men of Easy Company. Following these men's paths to Iwo Jima, James Bradley has written a classic story of the heroic battle for the Pacific's most crucial island - an island riddled with Japanese tunnels and 22,000 fanatic defenders who would fight to the last man. Few books ever have captured the complexity and furor of war and its aftermath as well as Flags of Our Fathers. A penetrating, epic look at a generation at war, this is history told with keen insight, enormous honesty, and the passion of a son paying homage to his father. It is the story of the difference between truth and myth, the meaning of being a hero, and the essence of the human experience of war.

Author Biography

James Bradley is the son of John "Doc" Bradley, one of the six flagraisers. A speaker and a writer, he lives in Rye, New York. Ron Powers is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist

Table of Contents

Sacred Ground	1	(22)
All-American Boys	23	(72)
America's War	95	(28)
Call of Duty	123	(46)
Forging the Spearhead	169	(40)
Armada	209	(48)
D-Day	257	(32)
D-Day Plus One	289	(16)
D-Day Plus Two	305	(24)
D-Day Plus Three	329	(8)
``So Every Son of a Bitch on This Whole Cruddy Island Can See It!''	337	(24)
Myths	361	(20)
``Like Hell with the Fire Out''	381	(38)
Antigo	419	(24)
Coming Home	443	(26)
The Mighty 7th	469	(30)
A Conflict of Honor	499	(30)
Movies and Monuments	529	(24)
Casualties of War	553	(16)
Common Virtue	569	(26)
Acknowledgments	595	(4)
Interior Photo List and Credits	599	(6)
Notes	605	(8)
Bibliography	613