As America celebrates its semiquincentennial, museums across the D.C. area are focusing on many of the country’s triumphs.
Eighty-one years ago this month, thousands of U.S. Marines were fighting one of the most pivotal battles of World War II: the Battle of Iwo Jima.
During that battle, an iconic photo was taken that has been the subject of war bond drives, movies and debate.
Both of the flags that were once raised on top of Mount Suribachi are on display for a limited time at the National Museum of the Marine Corps in Virginia.
Associated Press Photographer Joe Rosenthal snapped the iconic photo of the six Marines raising the second flag, a larger and more famous version of the stars and stripes.
Very few photos have been more famous in American history. It even inspired the Marine Corps Memorial in Arlington, Virginia.
“I can just imagine when that film was sent to Guam to be processed. And when that photo editor pulled that out of the soup, he must have thought: ‘Oh, my God, this thing is gold,’” said Col. Keil Gentry, the director at the National Museum of the Marine Corps.
Two American flags were raised on Feb. 23, 1945. The first was a smaller flag marking the Marines’ hard-won foothold on the island. Later that day, a much larger flag replaced it and when it was raised, the photo was snapped.
“It went viral before viral was even a term, and then later it became kind of this image of victory and sacrifice,” Gentry said.
Gentry said the flag was raised five days into the battle.
“The battle rages for another 30 days and in those 30 days, 5,931 Marines, Coast Guardsmen and sailors lose their lives above the high-water mark,” Gentry said. “That’s not even counting the soldiers and the Army air crew that died as well. So there’s a lot of meaning behind this image.”
After that image hit American newspapers, three Marines thought to be in the photo were brought back to sell war bonds.
“Only one of them is actually in the photograph, but he didn’t do so well. That was Ira Hayes. He was facing racism and alcoholism, he only lasts about a week on the war bonds tour,” Gentry said about the Marine, who was a member of the Gila River Indian Community.
For years, it has been disputed who exactly was in the photograph raising the second flag.
Gentry was a part of the group that finalized the six — a decision that wasn’t made official until 2017.
“But part of me wishes we hadn’t identified any of them,” Gentry said. “It would have been better that six faceless individuals were working together to raise the flag. I think that would have spoken volumes.”
Many of the men who raised the flag, like Cpl. Harold Keller, rarely spoke of the moment and didn’t even tell his kids that he was one of the men in the iconic photograph.
“These guys did not want to be lionized for just putting up a replacement flag,” Gentry said.
“The cost for that 5-mile by 2.5-mile chunk of sulfur in the middle of the ocean was incredibly high. And I think it speaks volumes of those three Marines that they didn’t want to be lionized for just being in a photograph.”
One of the men who raised the flag, U.S. Navy Hospital Corpsman John “Doc” Bradley, did earn the second highest honors for valor, the Navy Cross.
“Two days before this flag raising at the base of Mount Suribachi, under small arms and mortar fire, he goes out to basically protect a Marine and stabilize the Marine by actually giving him plasma, all the while telling the other Marines to stay back, and he drags that Marine to safety,” Gentry told WTOP.
Bradley was not recognized as a flag raiser until decades later.
The smaller first flag has been on display with its larger replacement at the National Museum of the Marine Corps since Feb. 16 — the anniversary of the beginning of the Battle of Iwo Jima.
It will stay there through March. 26, marking the battle’s end.
“It is such an iconic image that most Americans are familiar with, and by coming to the museum, you can get a deeper understanding,” Marine Corps Heritage Foundation President and CEO Maj. Gen. James W. Lukeman told WTOP.
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