Posted on 02/23/2005 5:59:23 PM PST by Citizen James
Joe Rosenthal of Novato will be forever linked to a photograph he shot in a fraction of a second, 60 years ago today. His daughter, Anne, hopes he will be remembered for the times before and since he took what has been called the most memorable war photograph of all time. In an instant of time, Rosenthal focused his Speed Graphic camera on the image - five Marines and one Navy corpsman raising the flag atop Mount Suribachi in Iwo Jima. The photograph won the 1945 Pulitzer Prize and eventually became the artistic inspiration for the Marine Corps War Memorial, a bronze sculpture erected in Arlington, Va., in 1954 to honor all Marines.
"Personally, I hope he's not just known for that one fraction of a second," said Anne Rosenthal, 55, of San Rafael. "Anyone who has had this type of notoriety for one episode certainly tires of it. There's so much to be said about it. I've known this picture my whole life."
Today marks the 60th anniversary of the battle for Iwo Jima and Rosenthal's famous photograph, which came to epitomize the bloody battle that was one of the deadliest in Marine Corps history with more than 6,000 Americans killed.
The events of Iwo Jima will be the center of attention today when veterans come together in San Francisco at the Marines' Memorial Club & Hotel for a daylong program dedicated to those who served.
Rosenthal, 93, and in failing health, will be unable to attend. Today he lives in a Novato apartment and goes out occasionally for lunch with friends. His daughter helps him keep medical appointments.
Through his daughter, Rosenthal has declined interviews with the Independent Journal and other news organizations.
"Anyone who has achieved a certain level of fame certainly has my sympathy," Anne Rosenthal said. "It's not an easy life. I'm sure he didn't aspire to be famous, but he's certainly doing well with it. It's been overwhelming for him at times. He's easily pleased. He's the most ordinary man."
Rosenthal said she will do something special with her father today.
"We'll do something to celebrate," she said.
Rosenthal's eyesight has diminished, so going out in public is difficult. Close friend Kevin Leary, a colleague while working at the San Francisco Chronicle, had lunch with him last week. Leary had planned on taking Rosenthal to the Iwo Jima ceremony.
"It's my impression, he's very honored by the attention, he appreciates it, but it's exhausting and can be draining on a guy his age," said Leary, a former general assignment reporter at the Chronicle who went on several assignments with Rosenthal during his career that ended in 2002.
"He's always been very modest about it," Leary said. "He's always said, 'I was the one who took the picture. The Marines took Iwo Jima.' He became an icon and suddenly he's one of the last survivors of that group. When people recognize him, he's always gracious and friendly."
The world, however, wasn't always so to Rosenthal.
Anne Rosenthal said there have been numerous erroneous things printed in the media over the years about her father and his famous exploits on Iwo Jima. For more than 50 years, Rosenthal has lived with the rumors and innuendo that the famous scene was posed and that it was not the first flag-raising at Iwo Jima.
"The sad fact is that there are a lot of untruths that have been written about it in print," Anne Rosenthal said. "So they continue to have a life. I think that may be a big stumbling block in his mind. He told the truth from day one. Some people still get it wrong.
"He tries to shake it off with humor, but I think it must be tiresome after 60 years of defending it. He calls himself lucky. That he captured the shot doesn't surprise me. He was well prepared and it was a lucky shot."
Rejected by the U.S. Army and Navy as a military photographer because he was nearsighted, Rosenthal began working with the Associated Press, and in time, became one of the Pacific theater's most distinguished photographers, working in New Guinea, Hollandia and Guam.
According to an AP story, Rosenthal retold his tale that on Feb. 23, 1945, he was making his daily trek to Iwo Jima on a landing craft when he heard a flag was being raised on Mount Suribachi.
Rosenthal lugged his bulky camera up the mountain with two other photographers. After meeting some Marines on the way up, the photographers were told the flag already had been raised on the summit. They continued up the hill.
The first flag had been raised at 10:37 a.m., but shortly thereafter Marine commanders decided to replace the flag with a larger one, so there was a second flag-raising by Marines.
Rosenthal described in succinct detail the memorable events in an article for Collier's magazine in 1955.
"Out of the corner of my eye ... I had seen the men start the flag up," Rosenthal wrote. "I swung my camera, and shot the scene."
After taking the famous photo, Rosenthal gathered the Marines on the summit for a jubilation shot under the flag, unsure if he had captured the earlier image.
Once his photographs were shipped off to Guam for processing, Rosenthal filed the captions for the photos from the command ship.
"Atop 550-foot Suribachi Yama, the volcano at the southwest tip of Iwo Jima, Marines of the Second Battalion, 28th Regiment, Fifth Division, hoist the Stars and Stripes, signaling the capture of this key position," Rosenthal wrote.
Oakland Tribune chief photographer Ron Riesterer, who knows Rosenthal, said the famous photograph was even more remarkable considering the state of camera equipment then and the thought of carrying it around in war time.
"He only had one shot at it so that made it even greater," said Riesterer, who was the photography chief when the staff was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for its coverage of the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake.
"Nowadays, everything is auto focus, auto everything," Riesterer said. "Now you can shoot eight frames a second. Then, you were lucky to get off two shots in 15 seconds."
Anne Rosenthal said her father "talks about the digital days like it's the second coming. He's always been a focused person and I think that's what made him excellent in the field. He was someone who always had to be in the action. He really wanted to tell the story."
"He was a journalist," said Leary, who often accompanied Rosenthal on city assignments. "That photograph wasn't a race to see who took it first. It was a work of art. There was a certain element of luck. But he had the guts to be where he was, right in the middle of battle. He's given me a ring-side seat to World War II."
Leary recalled Rosenthal's retirement party had all the pomp and circumstance of a Memorial Day parade. It was held at Treasure Island, a Marine band was brought up from the Twentynine Palms military base in Southern California and Rosenthal enjoyed a police escort from his home in San Francisco.
On the walls of Rosenthal's apartment is an official proclamation by the Marine Corps acknowledging the dedicated war correspondent as an honorary Marine. Nowhere is there a copy of the famous photograph.
"I think that's one of his proudest possessions," Leary said.
You demean your father, his actions (gotta be brave/stupid to follow Leathernecks into the thick of things sans a weapon), and the actions of the men he was with that day.
PJ O'Rourke developed the term "The Perpetually Indignant" to describe leftist protesters.
However, I think it applies to a lot of FReepers. Simply are frantically looking at all times for stuff that they can be offended by. Her statement seemed pretty innocuous to me.
Given the state of journalism, I am unsure whether the woman is the one doing the demeaning or if there is some selective quoting going on.
You're right, that could well be
I can't even figure out what in what Rosenthal's daughter said is "demeaning."
I mean, it's not like she said she enjoyed urinating on American Flags and thought the Marines were war criminals.
He's always said, 'I was the one who took the picture. The Marines took Iwo Jima.'
Now that's class right there.
That comment offended me! :)
Have you read "Flags of our Fathers" ?
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