[The rest of the story:]
- With Mount Suribachi looming over them, Marines cross the sandy terraces of the Iwo Jima beachhead against withering Japanese fire. Designated a D-Day objective, Suribachi would be taken only after four days of heavy fighting. (Photo: PFC Robert R. Campbell, USMC)
“Early on the morning of 23 February 1945, the fourth day after the assault landing on Iwo Jima, Lieutenant Colonel Chandler W. Johnson, commander of 2d Battalion, 28th Marines, ordered First Lieutenant Harold G. Schrier to take forty men and secure the top of Mount Suribachi. Johnson handed the lieutenant a small American flag to raise over the summit. The patrol, climbing cautiously, reached the windswept crater of the extinct volcano by mid-morning. Schrier, Platoon Sergeant Ernest I. Thomas, Jr., Sergeant Henry O. Hansen, Corporal Charles W. Lindberg, and Privates First Class Louis C. Charo and James Michels quickly rigged the flag to a length of Japanese pipe and raised the colors. Staff Sergeant Louis R. Lowry, a combat photographer for Leatherneck magazine, who came up with the patrol, recorded the scene. Two enemy soldiers emerged from hiding; others threw grenades from a large cave. The Marines disposed of the opposition, and Lowry, trying to get out of the line of fire, tumbled down a rocky slope and broke his camera. Both he and is film survived the fall.
The Stars and Stripes flying over Iwo’s highest point brought cheers from the thousands of men on the beaches below. Ships sounded horns and whistles and many a man choked up. Secretary of the Navy James V. Forrestal, present as an observer, saw the national colors waving over this heavily fortified Japanese island on the path to Tokyo and predicted: ‘The raising of that flag on Suribachi means there will be a Marine Corps for the next five hundred years’.
Johnson realized that his flag (just 54 x 28) inches was too small to be seen all across the island, so he sent a lieutenant to obtain a larger flag from one of the landing ships. An officer of LST 779 gave the Marine the flag (96 x 56 inches) that the ship flew on Sundays and holidays. When Johnson received the folded colors, he passed them to Private First Class Rene A. Gagnon, a runner about to head up Suribachi to deliver radio batteries to Schrier. Gagnon climbed with four other men of Company E – Sergeant Michael Strank, Corporal Harlon H. Block, and Private First Class Franklin R. Sousley and Ira A. Hayes – who were laying communications wire to the top. They passed Marines sealing caves and blowing up bunkers to silence opposition on the slopes. Three photojournalists – Staff Sergeant William H. Genaust, Private First Class Robert R. Campbell, and civilian Joe Rosenthal of the Associated Press – had heard that a flag was to be raised and they set out to record the event. Half way up they met Lowry coming down. Lowry told them of the first flag raising.
When the three photographers reached the summit, they found five Marines and a Navy corpsman clustered around a length of pipe, preparing the larger flag to replace the first one. They carefully wrapped the ensign around one end of the pipe to keep it from touching the ground. All three photographers moved into position just in time to capture the moment. As the pipe rose, the strong wind caught the flag, unfurled it, and snapped it out to full extension. The men nearest the base steadied the pole and then reached upward to jam it down into the ground, while the others gathered rocks to pile around it. Genaust’s movie camera captured those few seconds of action in color, while Campbell, shooting from another angle, caught, in a single black-and-white still image, both the smaller flagpole being lowered to the ground and the new one going up. Rosenthal, standing near Genaust, clicked his shutter at what he considered to be ‘the peak of the action’, but he felt that the shot was ‘mediocre’.
He asked the Marines and corpsmen in the vicinity to stand near the flag, and a group, imitating the classic Japanese banzai pose, shouted and raised their helmets and weapons in triumph. But no one there felt that the moment had any great significance.
Rosenthal delivered his film to a ship that afternoon. From there, it went by seaplane to Guam, where it was developed. The pool photo editor passed the flag-raising photo by radio to the States. The simple, dramatic image made the front page all across the country and stirred the hearts of nearly all who saw it. Among the few who were not moved were the editors of Life , the leading picture magazine of the day. They were certain it had been posed and did not use it. Time-Life war correspondent Robert L. Sherrod seemed to confirm their doubts when he filed a dispatch asserting that the famous picture was a ‘phony’ staged by Rosenthal after he missed out on the original flag-raising. The photographer’s own caption added to the confusion by saying it ‘signal[ed] the capture of this key position,’ thus appearing to indicate that this had been the first flag to go up. The Associated Press queried Rosenthal, ascertained the facts, and got Sherrod’s erroneous story quashed, but not before a radio program had quoted from it.
- Lt. Harold Schrier’s patrol on the morning of 23 February first raised this small flag. After a few hours it was replaced with a larger flag that could be seen from all over the island.
The second flag, the subject of the Rosenthal photograph, became windwhipped and torn during the month if flew over Suribachi before the island of Iwo Jima was declared “secure.” Both flags are now displayed in the Marine Corps museum in the Washington Navy Yard.
Toward the end of March, Time published a brief article explaining the two flag-raisings and noting that Rosenthal’s ‘unposed’ work was already ‘the most widely printed photograph of World War II’. At this time, Life finally published the picture and the story of the two flags. The public cared nothing for the details and continued to swoon over Rosenthal’s compelling shot. The picture became the centerpiece of the Seventh War Bond Drive and won the Pulitzer Prize. The Post Office quickly issued a stamp of the scene that would sell in record numbers.
A lone Marine stands guard over the flag flying from the crest of Suribachi. The 556-foot tall volcano dominated the island and until taken gave the Japanese clear fields of observation and fire onto the invasion beaches below.
