Response

So today I picked up the book "Flags of our Fathers" and started to read it after the vocab test. It starts with the son of one of the six men who raised the flag that day during the battle on Iwo Jima. He tells of his life growing up unknowing of the heroic deeds in which his father had done. As he tells of his childhood he describes how his father never wanted to speak of that day during the war. His father would always quickly change the subject if someone tried to bring it up. There were never-ending reporters trying to barge down their door to hear the story of the father. Man years later after the boys father had passed he gathered his brother, his mother, and his sister and the made a journey to Iwo Jima. The island now again controlled by Japan and somewhat by the U.S. the family must gain special access to venture to the island. A well renowned general of the U.S. Marine Corp. personally flew them to the island in his plane and when they landed they were greeted by the Japanese prime minister, a red carpet, and a wall of Japanese soldiers to the right and Marines to the left. They ventured around the island seeing the once decimated place of war in which their father and husband had risked his life to win. His son found the very spot in which the flag had been raised and then he began to realize how tragic it all really was. The son tells of how they searched for their fathers will in his house but instead of finding the will they found three large boxes full of their fathers past in the military. They learned that their beloved father and husband was a decorated hero of war. He saved a young boys life by pulling him out of the line of fire after being shot. He was the first of all the troops to arrive at the top of the volcano and claim it as theirs. The son always wondered what had happened to the five other soldiers that helped his father raise the flag. He finally found the answers when he opened the boxes. Three of the soldiers went on to die in the very same battle. The other two went on to die in a battle later in the war. His father was the only survivor of the men who raised the flag. As he ventured across the island he looked across the rough terrain and picked up what he thought to be a rock but after a closer look he realized it to be shrapnel from the battles on Iwo Jima. His father had taken some of the very same shrapnel to the grave with him. The son walked through a bunker where a Japanese soldier sprayed bullets at incoming American soldiers only to be burned alive by a lone marine with a flamethrower. The gun was still mounted to the wall and the barrel was melted down the wall.