Book Portfolio

Flags Of Our Fathers
James Bradley
Ron Powers
Flags Of Our Fathers is the story of the war on the small Japanese island of Iwo Jima. The story takes place on Iwo Jima, and there are five special soldiers. The six soldiers in the middle of the story raised the second flag on the top of Mt. Suribachi. Not many people know that two flags were raised not only one. 6 Strong-willed and determined soldiers raised the second flag and they were John Bradley, Franklin Sousley, Harlon Block, Ira Hayes, Rene Gagnon, and Mike Strank They all joined the military at very young ages, the oldest Mike Strank being 24. They all saw and fought through the horrible war on Iwo Jima.
Iwo Jima is a very small Japanese island. It only takes about 5and a half minutes to drive across it at 60mph. One of the bloodiest battles in WWII was fought on Iwo Jima. When the soldiers arrived at the island they were full on attacked from all sides. It was like committing suicide for them to run onto that island. Approximately 1400 boys landed on the island of Iwo Jima. 288 Replacements came into the battle also making it the total of 1688.You know how many walked off the island? 177, that’s it. More than 1400 boys killed. After the war 353 Soldiers were awarded the medal of honor.
So what happens in the book is we are introduced to the six soldiers. Then it moves on to them going on to the island. It then talks about D-Day one and how many losses they suffered and then moves on to the other three D-Days. The best part in the book was when it gave a description of the boys raising the flag. Somehow, I could just picture what was running through their minds. They didn’t think that they were doing anything out of the ordinary, they were just following orders. Well, they surely got recognized for it. The book then moves on to talk about what happened when they got home. One former soldier, John Bradley, stood by his belief that he wasn’t a hero at all, he just did what he was told.
All in all, I thought the book was good in the beginning and then it got very dull. I thought that the author did a good job of incorporating history into the whole thing. The history in the book was all about WWII. It talked about all the struggles they faced, the soldiers they lost, and the lifelong friendships they had made.