I've finished Flyboys in the past week. I wasn't a fan of the book the book the whole time so I tried to finish it quickly as I could. The book has changed tone once again. In the beginning it was boring and hard to read, in the middle it got interesting but dark and twisted making you want to read but also having what you were reading was disturbing. Then near the end the fighting has stopped and they start talking about all the losses from both the Americans and the Japanese. Some of the parents and people that new the Flyboys couldn't get over the loss that they faced or the people that convinced them to join in the first place. An example of this is “Already hard drinkers. Marve’s parents- Hoyt Sr. and Clarinda - and his brother Hoyt Jr., upped their intake to drown their sorrow. Hoyt Jr. suffered a special survivor’s guilt. He was the one who had talked Marve into enlisting.” this shows that he at first thought it was a good idea for him to join but after learning start had happened to him and that he died since Hoyt Jr. convinced him to join the military. There were stories like this from both sides but the Japanese were trained to stop caring for life and do anything they had to do, they would even give up their own life if it was required to complete the mission. Since last week the book continued to talk about the torture that was instilled upon both the Japanese and Americans. They also talked about how after the fires had stopped from the incendiary bombs that got dropped on Tokyo families were split up. One family that they talked about went back to where their house used to be so they all could get back together. The father and daughter were together and the mother got separated from them. She also had a baby on her back. The father and daughter went back to the house and waited a long time for the mother to return but they didn't realize that she was already their. They didn't recognize her since she had a fire blanket on from the military. She had burn marks on her back from where the baby was. There was worse burns where she was touching the baby like on her elbows. The baby belonged to the daughter not the mother carrying the baby. That night the daughter lost two of her sons in the fire. The rest of the book talks about the families is the fallen Flyboys and some I'd the hard times they went through. One mother went insane since the navy never told her what exactly happened to her son. Her husband had to have all the letters from the navy go to the local VA and have them call him when they got a letter about his son so he could spare his wife from reading the letters. Overall it was a different read from what I've normally been reading this year but it was still a historical book. It was a more difficult read since it was hard to keep wanting to read it but I enjoyed the challenge. I would recommend it but you would have to like history and be able to read a book that is slow in the beginning but knowing that it picks up and becomes interesting later on in it.
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George RadashawArchives
May 2017
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