by James Bradley, 2003, Back Bay Books / Little, Brown and Company, New York

When I first started reading this book, I thought that it was going to be just another collection of reminiscences from veterans of WWII that would tell how horrible their situations were.  I was pleased to find that the author has given a great deal of thought to what made the Japanese behave the way that they did, particularly individuals who were in the lower ranks.  In addition, he is balanced in his assessment of American atrocities that occurred in that time frame.  He does not excuse the behavior, but simply provides some insight into the circumstances under which they occurred. The book purports to be primarily about the nine Americans who were shot down over Chichi Jima and the cruel fate that six of them suffered.  The author, however, clearly did not have enough information and material to write an entire book on the subject.  He, therefore, spread out his story to include other topics such as the bombing of Japan.  Since I was not aware of the many facts surrounding these other topics, the book became much more interesting to me than if he had confined the book to just the the circumstances surrounding these nine flyers.  Overall, I think the book was pretty good, despite some pretty gruesome pages describing the fate of some of the flyers.