Today is the day to quit letting me tell you what to do.

Today I chat with the author of Flyboys, a book that has been on the New York Times bestseller list for some time now. That is old news to him though since his first book, Flags of our Fathers, a tale of the horror and heroism that took place during the battle of Iwo Jima, told from his unique perspective as the son of one of the flagraisers in that famous photo, was also a fixture on the bestseller list.

The James Bradley Interview: Slightly Less Than Twenty Questions

The paperback version of Flyboys is currently on the New York Times bestseller list although it was published in 2003. Why the renewed interest?
The interest wasn't really renewed, since it's been a steady seller since it was released. Flyboys now in its third form: it was huge when it was a hardcover, and the paperback did very well: it spent 16 weeks on the New York Times Bestseller list. Flyboys took its expected dive after many good weeks, but then it was just reissued in the mass market form-that's what jumped it back up. I also produced a one-hour special for CNN where I took President [H.W.] Bush to Chichi Jima and introduced him to the guys who were going to cut off his head. So there was a lot of publicity.

For your two books, what was your method of research and writing? Did you do them simultaneously?
It took me three universities to get a degree, so "method" isn't the right word for me. I kind of just wrote. I jump off cliffs in Jamaica: I'm a waterskier and a surfer. You just do it.

In my first life, I was the son of a flag-raiser. We found out amazing details about my father, after he died. He slept with my mother for 47 years, and I was the one who told her that he was awarded the second-highest award in the nation for heroism. I accidentally vacuumed up all the details that my mother and brothers didn't know. I wrote Flags of our Fathers as a son.

For the second book, I became a professional author because I wasn't writing about my father. I developed a methodology that is boring and long. I vacuum in all the facts from the books, interviews and from traveling with a digital camera-I can blow up pictures to look at them and remember the conditions of where I was. When I interview I have a laptop and I type quickly. When I research books, I read the book and sidelight. I read a 360-page book about Teddy Roosevelt and find paragraphs from 70 pages that I want to excerpt -I sidelight it, my secretary scans it and gives it to me as an emailed Word document and also in a three-ring binder which I call a "Folder Book." If I read 325 books, there are 325 corresponding Folder Books.

And, if I'm researching in China and I can't absorb it all right away but I take notes. If I'm going down the highway, whatever I'm looking at, I'm writing it down and taking pictures of it. I have no idea if it will be useful. Later, when I get these books down to folders, I can look at the folders and figure out what happened when I read those books and go look at the pictures and the interviews and say "Where is the story?" And then I say "Oh there it is! That's amazing." Doris Kearns Goodwin didn't know for four years where the story was for her latest book.

My editor for Flags of our Fathers estimated that I probably actually wrote 7000 pages, but I cull a 350 book from that.

I was raised in Antigo Wisconson, which at the time was the biggest syrup producer in the country. As a Cub Scout, we took a field trip to the maple syrup form, to see huge vats of sap simmered slowly which resulted in a miniscule amount of syrup. Going from the wide to the narrow: that is my methodology.

You've been a speaker at the meetings of a long list of associations and organizations. Some make sense for a writer like you, like the National Press Club, or the Miami Book Festival, or the National Museum of the Pacific War. But how do you prepare to speak for companies like the Michigan Funeral Directors Association or National Roofing Contractors?
Claire Zulkey is very perceptive and thinks deeply because unconsciously, she split my speaking career into the natural two categories which it falls: the first three organizations, which Claire says make sense, it's true, are speeches about books. Now, regarding the Funeral Directors Association: my father was a funeral director. He was interested in conducting better funerals. The NRC are interested in safer conditions, better quality, more profit. When I speak to associations and corporations, I speak about my personal experiences in overcoming adversity and how they can be better people and run better businesses and be better bosses and be better mates, etc. This speech is called "Doing the Impossible." The first group I do for no fee. The second is a paid career.

What was it like to travel to Chichi Jima with George Bush?
Very emotional.

What are some of your favorite history books?
Flags of our Fathers and Flyboys.

What did you remember feeling when you learned more extensively of your father's experiences?
As a child I knew that my father was in the Iwo Jima flagraising photo. I couldn't avoid it. Everyone knew my father was one of the flagraisers.

But I lived around the guy for almost 30 years and he would not talk about it. Many people say, "Oh, my uncle fought in the war and he didn't talk about it either. I understand your father's silence."

But their uncles weren't called by The New York Times, Walter Cronkite, the Norwegian newspapers, the President of the United States all their lives. Their uncles didn't receive Post Office buckets of mail every day from around the world asking him to talk like my dad did. I pestered my dad to talk, and he didn't. He died, and we discovered many things about him, like his heroism, that he didn't even tell his wife. It blew my mind and that's the book Flags of our Fathers. John Wayne was writing him letters begging him for his autograph. We didn't know all that. He kept it in the closet.

Regarding that book, you say in another interview that you knew your father held no grudges against Japanese people. Do you think it would have been a more difficult book to write if he had?
I don't know anyone my dad was ever mad at.

Do you have any vivid memories from watching your father work at his job as a funeral director?
I remember the story of my father teaching a 71-year-old new widow how to write a check. I remember the story of my father telling a new widow how to balance an account. He helped bereaved people figure out how to pay their bills, how to live without getting thrown out of their homes, how to collect money from Social Security when the paperwork would sometimes baffle them.

After my father's death, I interviewed my brother Tom, who is one of the two owners of the Bradley funeral home that my father founded in Antigo WI.

Tom said, "Before I came to work with Dad, I had run a larger funeral home in Appleton. I thought I knew how to run a funeral home better than dad. In the larger funeral home that I ran, we thought it was wonderful customer service if we compiled a list of all the different agencies and organizations that the bereaved might have to call, like Social Security and the veterans' agency. We'd give it to them. When I went to work for dad, the bereaved would come in and he would say "Just bring me all the files" and they would bring in confused files and Dad would personally sort it out and personally make the calls to make sure the people got the checks and that their lives became normal. Then he'd give them back the materials and take hours to give them tutorials they meant. He'd sit in his office and smoke cigarettes and make these calls. I saw him as a counselor and a helper to the community. There's a reason why the whole town came to his funeral.

If you could have been present to (safely) witness any battle that engaged American forces, which would it be?
The battle I would like to see is to keep all young boys in the beds their mothers made for them.

Do you think you will continue to stick with this genre or do you see yourself trying new areas?
My first two books were not only about the Pacific in World War II, but they were about a tiny little area on the globe where two miniscule islands-Iwo Jima and Chichi Jima-poke through the blue Pacific.

My third book goes back into Pacific history to the year 1905.

So, my vague intention for my future-let's say my next three books-is to continue to be Pacific-oriented, which means I will be dealing with the history between the United States and Asian countries, most specifically, Japan , Korea, China, the Philippines, the island archipelagos and groupings and Hawaii and Guam. That's where I hang out. I have a degree in East Asian history and that's where I am and that where I have decided that apparently no one else is.

Regarding fiction: smart people can write fiction.

Do you feel that Americans don't consider their soldiers to be heroes now the way they did during the World Wars? Do you feel this is the nature of modern war or modern Americans?
Americans are always looking for heroes.

After the James Frey episode, did you feel a push from your publisher or your readers to ensure that your stories in your books are all true?
No.

I am a nonfiction historical writer. Every word I write must be true or I am not a nonfiction historical writer. How did you convince reluctant veterans to speak about what they've seen on the battlefield? When do you push for a story and when do you walk away? The battle of Iwo Jima is the worst battle in the history of the US Marine Corp.

The navy corpsman on Iwo Jima processed 7,000 dead American bodies. Navy corpsmen on Iwo Jima leapt from foxhole to foxhole-from bloody soup tureen to bloody soup tureen.

During the research for Flags of our Fathers, I was speaking to a former Iwo Jima corpsman now in his mid-70's.

He said, "James, your dad didn't talk about his experiences and I don't talk about my experiences and I'm sure you can respect that."

"Yes sir." I answered. Of course, I respected his desire not to talk, but I kept the door open by asking him, "Is it OK if I phone you every so often to keep you abreast of my interviews with your Iwo Jima buddies?"

He agreed. I phoned him a few times and kept him updated. And on the 3rd or 4th call I just had a sense and I said to him, "Sir, I would guess you're not talking to me b/because when you were 18 or 19 years old you saw another 18-year-old old who had become your friend have his head blown off. And you probably remember the blood on your uniform like the blood that was on my dad's uniform. I respect your desire to not want to relive that, but can I give you my perspective? When you die, the story of that 18 year old buddy dies too. Now I've been crying for three years for this book. If you have to cry to tell me something, I just think that's the way it is."

He said, "Call me tomorrow at 1 PM" and he hung up.

The next day at 1 PM I phoned him: he had shooed his wife from the home. He had isolated himself in a room with a telephone and closed the doors in that room. And for 30 years he screamed into the telephone. At the end of one of the most godawful stories I'd eve heard, my keyboard was wet with my tears. He said "That's all I can say!" And hung up. At that point I got my dog, a black Shar-Pei named Oscar, and walked by the river for three hours.

In researching these books, has there been one subject that you've learned more about than you ever expect to know, like about how planes work or how to drop a bomb or raise a flag?
The one subject that surprised me was that contrary to what we are told, almost every human who is close to the violent death of another human will suffer personal trauma for the rest of their lives. I was pressing a corpsman my dad knew for details about his experience and he said, "James, I'm 81 and I'm on Prozac. I'm just trying to get a good night's sleep."

How does it feel to be the 143rd person interviewed for Zulkey.com?
Right now, Claire, I feel better than ever.

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