The Major Conflict in Flyboys is the United States of America raging against the Japanese War Machine. The Book starts out giving a background of the Japanese before the World War Era, and vividly portrays how they became a world power. In the beginning of the book, you learn about the fall of the Shogun and the rise of Emperor Meiji. Before the Japanese became a modern country, they were once a very enclosed nation, who believed they lived on Gods Land, and that they were much more special than the rest of the world. In Flyboys it illustrates how the Japanese decided they needed to have a supreme ruler and become a world power.
While the broad conflict of the book is World War II, the focused conflict is the fight over Chichi Jima. Chichi Jima is a small island about 800 miles away from Japan. This is a pivotal point to control, as it is one of the nearest islands to Japan. Matthew C. Perry discovered Chichi Jima for the Americans and described it as “high, bold, and rocky, and . . . evidently of volcanic formation. [It is] green with verdure and a full growth of tropical vegetation, which is, here and there, edged with coral reefs.” Also, “Chichi Jima, just twice the size of New York’s Central Park, had “two prominent peaks . . . one which reaches an elevation of a thousand feet, the other eleven hundred. . . . They are clearly seen on entering the harbor.” Chichi Jima is one of the Bonin Islands, extremely close to Iwo Jima, one of the most famous islands of World War II.
The Flyboys were flying a mission to destroy the Japanese Radio Complex, when they started to get shot down. They ended up dropping 2 tons of explosives on the complex, doing a lot of severe damage. They were captured and tortured. When word of this reached home, “FDR predicted that Japan’s “barbarous” actions “will make the American people more determined than ever to blot out the shameless militarism of Japan.””
This shows why the Japanese and the Americans both wanted this island very much; The Americans for a pacific naval base, and the Japanese for both a base, and to protect their sacred country. Eventually the Japanese secure Chichi Jima and create a major radio complex to transmit crucial information back to the Japanese main land. Early in the book a group of American pilots were flying a mission and ended up crash landing on Chichi Jima. The 8 Marines, Navy, and Army flyers were all captured by the Japanese.
I think a reason why they were tortured and brutally beat was one, because the Japanese felt it was their duty to save their people and obey their superiors. But two, because “A Japanese soldier’s life on Iwo Jima and in No Mans Land [Chichi Jima] in 1944 and early 1945 was tedious, dull, depressing, and dangerous. . . . Japanese boys dug caves and tunnels into the stinking sulfurous rock.” I think they were extremely stressed with the war, and all of the hard work. Especially since the Americans had killed many of their friends, and the Japanese new to war, they didn’t know how much was too much. In the end, the Flyboys were tortured in some of the worst ways imaginable.
