The Capitol Times, August 21, 2000

Headline: Father's Iwo Jima story strikes a chord
By Rob Zaleski

Never mind that he wasn't a journalist and didn't know the first thing about writing a book.

James Bradley knew he had a story to tell, a gripping story of monumental importance.

"I'm going to make these guys come alive,'' the Antigo, Wis., native told me during a phone interview two years ago from his home in New York City.

The six guys Bradley was referring to had been embedded in the minds of millions of Americans for half a century. On Feb. 23, 1945, they raised the American flag on Iwo Jima -- a heroic moment in World War II that was captured by Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal and has since become the most reproduced photo ever.

Three of those men were among the 6,000 U.S. servicemen who died amid the fierce fighting on that tiny speck of an island in the Pacific.

The three others -- James Bradley's father, John Bradley; Rene Gagnon of Manchester, N.H.; and Ira Hayes, a Pima Indian from Sacaton, Ariz. -- not only survived that blood bath but became overnight celebrities, got to meet President Harry Truman and were sent on a coast-to-coast tour the likes of which this country had never witnessed before.

Then, just as quickly, they slid into oblivion.

John Bradley, for instance, returned to Antigo, got married, opened a funeral parlor, helped raise eight kids and became a community philanthropist.

And he rarely spoke about his place in history again.

It was only after John Bradley died in 1994, at age 70, that his family -- while poring over his old papers -- began to appreciate what an inspiring role he had played in that war. And it was then that James Bradley set aside his career as a self-employed entrepreneur and embarked on a one-man crusade to find out all he could about those six men -- not only who they were, but how their lives happened to converge on a remote volcanic island in 1945.

Three months ago -- after five years of research and more than 600 interviews -- Bradley's "Flags of Our Fathers,'' co-authored by Ron Powers, hit the nation's bookstores. A week later, it was No. 2 on the New York Times' nonfiction best-seller list. (It's now No. 5.)

And 46-year-old James Bradley has been frantically trying to regain his equilibrium ever since.

"It's like waves of sonic booms,'' he marveled in a phone interview last week. "It was like one day I'd written this book and the next day I was on ABC's `Good Morning America.' There were three stories in the New York Times within the first two weeks after it was published. It was on the front page of USA Today.

"So I'm not kidding you. It's like I open my front door and you can just feel the booms rolling across the country.''

Not bad, he acknowledges, for a book that was rejected by 27 publishers before an editor at Bantam Books -- Katie Hall -- agreed that Bradley's idea had merit and persuaded her bosses to give him a $75,000 advance in 1998.

Asked if he'd been discouraged by the rejections, Bradley chuckled.

"Yeah, but I sold pots and pans all over Wisconsin in the summers while I was attending Notre Dame. And we learned to say `next' whenever we got a no.''

Still, "When you get a no in ordinary life, you keep going,'' he noted. "In the publishing business, some person with a master's in journalism takes out a very starchy, official-looking piece of paper and writes an extremely literate letter about what a dope you are.

"So it's a little more than discouraging. I mean, three of the 27 rejections I got suggested this might make a good magazine article.''

Nonetheless, Bradley insists he holds no grudges. What the publishers failed to understand, he says, is the emotional impact that one photo continues to have.

"And, frankly, I don't understand it myself,'' he confessed. "Why is it on the walls in French farmhouses? I've seen Chinese buying copies of the book and taking it home to China. I'm not sure anyone can explain it.''

Whatever the case, Bradley says he's made a determined effort to keep the book's startling popularity in perspective.

In other words, "I don't see this as, `Holy man, there's a best-selling book out there with my name on it,' '' he said. "I see this as I'm the curator of the stories of these six boys. I mean, America has a father, George Washington. His face is out there on a rock in South Dakota.

"Well, these are America's boys. They stand 35 feet tall (in a monument) at Arlington National Cemetery.''

Regardless, he's not about to let this opportunity pass. He's already putting together a follow-up book that will contain some of the heart-rending letters and e-mails he's received in recent months.

Moreover, he's negotiating with none other than Steven Spielberg for the movie rights to "Flags of Our Fathers'' -- for which Bradley will serve as a consultant.

And that's not all.

Sometime soon, he hopes to begin researching yet another book on World War II -- the untold story of the millions of mothers who suffered in silence and went about their lives while their young sons were engaged in battle.

In his current book, he notes, he went out and discovered his father.

"Now I want to go out and discover my grandma.''