Mom's family tree had a member who was stationed with the Army in the Philippines during 1941. His family lived there also. As the war clouds were gathering he sent them back to the U.S. When the Japanese invaded the Philippines he was captured and thought to have perished during the Bataan Death March. Decades later his son, who as a small child was in the Philippines before Pearl Harbor, went back and tried to determine the fate of his father. It turns out not only did he survive the Bataan Death March and imprisonment in the Philippines, but he also survived the voyage from the Philippines to Japan on 1 of those horribly crowded prison ships that managed to dodge being sunk by U.S. Navy submarines. He later perished in a POW camp in Japan. His remains, along with many other American POWs, were later recovered and interred in a mass grave at the Manila American Cemetery and Memorial.
My father would have been in the invasion force so he was always convinced that using the atomic bombs was the right thing to do. Even if he had survived that, his life over the next few years would have been different and he would never have met my mother so I would not be alive.
Yes, the story of Ira Hayes is very sad. The US government made heroes of the men captured in the photo and had them tour the US (to get people to buy war bonds), and they did not think they deserved any special recognition beyond what all the other military men were doing.