Flags of Our Fathers
Heroes of Iwo Jima
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- $9.99
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- $9.99
Publisher Description
The New York Times bestselling chronicle of one of the most famous moments in American military history--the raising of the U. S. flag at Iwo Jima during World War II--now adapted for young adults. Read the true story behind the immortal photograph that has come to symbolize the courage and strength of America and its armed forces.
This is a penetrating, epic look at a generation at war, told with keen insight and enormous honesty —also a major motion picture directed by Clint Eastwood. In February 1945, American Marines plunged into the surf at Iwo Jima–and into history. Through a hail of machine-gun and mortar fire, they battled to the island’s highest peak. And there, they raised a flag, signaling a historic step towards the eventual defeat of the Axis powers of World War II.
A powerful account of six very different men--three of which were killed in battle-- who came together in the heroic fight for the Pacific’s most crucial island. It is the story of the difference between truth and myth, the legacy of a hero, and the brutal cost of war.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
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.
