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Rosenthal’s Photograph of Iwo Jima Flag-Raising Quickly Became One of the War’s Most Famous
The six men who participated in the second or “famous” flag-raising on Mount Suribachi were Marines, joined by a medical corpsman. They were Sgt Michael Strank; Pharmacist’s Mate 2/c John H. Bradley, USN; Cpl Harlon H. Block; and PFCs Ira H. Hayes, Franklin R. Sousley, and Rene A. Gagnon. AP photographer Joe Rosenthal recalls stumbling on the picture accidentally: “I swung my camera around and held it until I could guess that this was the peak of the action, and shot.... Had I posed that shot, I would, of course, have ruined it.... I would have also made them turn their heads so that they could be identified ... and nothing like the existing picture would have resulted.”
Associated Press
There were two flags raised over Mount Suribachi on Iwo Jima, but not at the same time. Despite the beliefs of many, and contrary to the supposed evidence, none of the photographs of the two flag-raisings was posed. To begin with, early on the morning of 23 February 1945, four days after the initial landings, Captain Dave E. Severance, the commander of Company E, 2d Battalion, 28th Marines, ordered Lieutenant Harold G. Schrier to take a patrol and an American flag to the top of Suribachi. Staff Sergeant Louis R. Lowery, a Leatherneck magazine photographer, accompanied the patrol. After a short fire fight, the 54″-by-28″ flag was attached to a long piece of pipe, found at the crest of the mountain, and raised. This is the flag-raising which Lowery photographed. As the flag was thought to be too small to be seen from the beach below, another Marine from the battalion went on board LST 779 to obtain a larger flag. A second patrol then took this flag up to Suribachi’s top and Joe Rosenthal, an Associated Press photographer, who had just come ashore, accompanied it.
As Rosenthal noted in his oral history interview, “... my stumbling on that picture was, in all respects, accidental.” When he got to the top of the mountain, he stood in a decline just below the crest of the hill with Marine Sergeant William Genaust, a movie cameraman who was killed later in the campaign, watching while a group of five Marines and a Navy corpsman fastened the new flag to another piece of pipe. Rosenthal said that he turned from Genaust and out of the corner of his eye saw the second flag being raised. He said, “Hey, Bill. There it goes.” He continued: “I swung my camera around and held it until I could guess that this was the peak of the action, and shot.”
Some people learned that Rosenthal’s photograph was of a second flag-raising and made the accusation that it was posed. Joe Rosenthal: “Had I posed that shot, I would, of course, have ruined it.... I would have also made them turn their heads so that they could be identified for [Associated Press] members throughout the country, and nothing like the existing picture would have resulted.”
Later in the interview, he said: “This picture, what it means to me—and it has a meaning to me—that has to be peculiar only to me ... I see all that blood running down the sand. I see those awful, impossible positions to take in a frontal attack on such an island, where the batteries opposing you are not only staggered up in front of you, but also standing around at the sides as you’re coming on shore. The awesome situation, before they ever reach that peak. Now, that a photograph can serve to remind us of the contribution of those boys—that was what made it important, not who took it.”
Rosenthal took 18 photographs that day, went down to the beach to write captions for his undeveloped film packs, and, as the other photographers on the island, sent his films out to the command vessel offshore. From there they were flown to Guam, where the headquarters of Admiral Chester W. Nimitz, Commander in Chief, Pacific Fleet/Commander in Chief, Pacific Ocean Areas, was situated, and where the photos were processed and censored. Rosenthal’s pictures arrived at Guam before Lowery’s, were processed, sent to the States for distribution, and his flag-raising picture became one of the most famous photographs ever taken in the war, or in any war.—Benis M. Frank