Flags of our Fathers
James Bradley (with Ron Powers)

review by: Mike Spinney
Date: 6/15/03

I don’t read many books through. I start plenty of them, but few books are worth the effort it takes to toil through multiple-hundred pages. Too little fiction is entertaining; too little non-fiction is written in a compelling manner; too much advice is unnecessarily stretched well beyond the handful of pages it would take to convey a simple idea.

That said – I recently finished James Bradley’s Flags of Our Fathers, a posthumous tribute to the author’s father and five others who, on the Pacific island of Iwo Jima, raised the American Flag atop Mount Suribachi.

Originally purchased as a gift for my father-in-law, himself a U.S. Marine veteran of our Pacific war with the Japanese, the book came back into my possession following his death. My brother-in-law urged me to take it, telling me he couldn’t put it down.

Flags of Our Fathers is really two books in one. The first is truly a gripping tale of the men who fought a month-long battle for a strategic blister of sulfuric rock and sand. It focuses on the lives and harrowing ordeal of six young men who, by chance and the good fortune of a combat photographer named Joe Rosenthal, were forever immortalized as the image of the indomitable American fighting man.

The second is a sometimes touching, most of the time near-treacly homage to the man who would live to become the author’s father. As unspectacular as this part is, however, the tale of the battle for Iwo Jima and the personal stories in what would become the most heroic 30 days in the history of U.S. soldiering, is truly compelling stuff.

The book chronicles Marines Mike Strank, Franklin Sousley, Harlon Block, Ira Hayes, and Rene Gagnon, and Navy corpsman John “Doc” Bradley, from boyhood to enlistment and training, and through the carnage that became Iwo Jima. Following the famous flag-raising, Flags continues with the six and their fellow Marines as they inch their way across the island. Three never live to see their efforts culminate in victory, the others live, but remain tortured by the ordeal to the end.

Strank, Block, and Hayes are tragic characters – Hayes, perhaps, the most compelling of them all – depicted as the kind of Marines you’d want to share a foxhole with. Bradley is a noble caretaker who made it his mission to help every wounded comrade back into the fight or off the island. Gagnon comes off as a pathetic milktoast figure upon whom Dame Fate briefly smiles, then turns a cold shoulder. Marine Sousely’s picture is too dim for any conclusion other than that he was a good soldier and a good guy who picked the wrong time to stop paying attention.

The reader is introduced to numerous other Marines whose snippets indelibly round out the drama that unfolded on Iwo. It will be your privilege to meet them all.

Matter-of-fact reporting and emotional personal recounts of Iwo veterans and their families carry Flags powerfully. I was moved numerous times by stories of selfless acts of courage and heroism, bravery in the face of certain death, and true patriotism in action. Written and published prior to September 11, 2001, the current context makes Flags’ underlying sentiment that much more relevant.