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David Guillemette read Flags of Our Fathers by James Bradley

I've always enjoyed reading about history; we can all learn from the past. Flags of Our Fathers was a gift from my mother. It's the story of the five Marines and one Navy Corpsman who raised a US flag over Iwo Jima and became famous because of Joe Rosenthal's Pulitzer Prize-winning photo. Author James Bradley was the son of one of these six. It was not until after his father died that he found a box of his war memorabilia. That's when he decided to write this book.

Iwo Jima was one of the most costly Pacific battles. After the battle, when President Truman ordered these six soldiers home to receive the country's acclaim, the flag raisers felt that there were others that day who made personal, heroic sacrifices far greater than theirs. They knew that the real heroes were the men who did not come back.

Why, they wondered, were they the ones labeled as heroes after a battle packed with so many truly heroic acts? There were no bullets flying on Mt. Suribachi when they planted that replacement flag.

These were soldiers who, like my own father who served in World War II, rarely talked about their military experiences. In reading this book, I realized that here was a broad experience that my father shared with so many others of his generation. Flags of Our Fathers helped me to better understand him.

To Learn More ...

Learn more about the book at the Publisher's website and find out about the author James Bradley and visit a historical site which he created about Iwo Jima
Visit the National Parks Service page on the Iwo Jima statue at the US Marine Corps Memorial in Washington DC. Go to the Veteran's Information Project to learm more on how memories are being captured and preserved.

Let us know if there are other sites you would like to see listed about this book and its topics.

David Guillemette is the administrative lieutenant at the Sandwich Police Department and director of the Citizens Police Academy