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There were several times in this book where I had to tune it out. Learning of the atrocities committed by the Japanese commanders on United States Navy pilots was enough to make me sick.

James Bradley plunges into the stories of several young American naval pilots who attempted to dive-bomb and destroy the Japanese communications outpost on the island of Chichi-jima, an island 600 miles due south of Tokyo and 150 miles away from Iwo-jima. He does a wonderful job of describing the lives of the pilots prior to their enlistment in the Navy and, as a result, does a mighty fine job documenting the rise of naval aviation and the use of aircraft in war.

Bradley doesn't present a one-sided story, either. He was able to paint both sides of what happened to some of the "flyboys" who had the misfortune of being shot down over this Pacific hell, and of the enlisted Japanese infantry whose duty it was to defend the island under a doctrine of fear, instilled by the abusive, dictator-like Japanese commanders.

Bradley also details the use of incendiary bombs through retelling the destruction of Tokyo; this was the first true test of napalm. With passages including such details as:

(R)ivers of fire flowed down the streets. Canals boiled and humans burst spontaneously into flames, blazing like matchsticks. People's heads exploded in the heat, the liquid brains in their burst skulls bubbling an eerie fluorescence..."

set the tone of the hellish nightmares that war, of any kind, creates. It is also worth noting that the bombing of Tokyo killed more people in a single-day than those killed by the atomic bomb at Nagasaki. Only the death toll from the atomic destruction at Hiroshima would surpass--just slightly surpass--the number dead from the incendiary bombing.

Two final notes: during trials after the war, the atrocities carried out by the Japanese commanders were uncovered and the officers responsible were court-martialed and subsequently executed; and one of the pilots who was shot down over Chichi-jima was Lieutenant George H. W. Bush, who was rescued by the USS Finback, an American submarine.