Author(s): James Bradley

World History

When nine US Navy and Marine airmen were shot down over the remote island of Chichi Jima in September 1944, one was rescued by US submarine. Young Avenger pilot George Bush would much later become American president. A terrible fate awaited the rest at the hands of the Japanese, so shocking as to be subsequently covered up by both the US and Japan, even from the men's own families. To make sense of this horrifying episode, whose mystery he solves after nearly sixty years, James Bradley has to chronicle the history of the whole Pacific War, tracing its brutalised conflict far back to their first encounter some 150 years ago, through the savage Japanese warrior mentality to America's hellish firebombing of civilians in Tokyo. A masterpiece of historical narrative to follow his triumphant portrait of the men who raised the flag on lwo Jima, Flags of our Fathers, Flyboys will change for ever our understanding of the Pacific War.