The Story Behind the World-Famous Photograph of U.S. Marines Raising the American Flag During the Battle of Iwo Jima
Joe Rosenthal’s iconic photos from Iwo Jima helped the United States raise $26 billion for the war and served as the basis for the Marine Corps War Memorial in Arlington, Virginia
/https://tf-cmsv2-smithsonianmag-media.s3.amazonaws.com/accounts/headshot/sarah.png)
On February 23, 1945, four bloody days after U.S. troops landed on Iwo Jima, Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal captured an image of Marines raising the American flag on Mount Suribachi. The photo went on to win the Pulitzer Prize and to visually define the Pacific Theater of World War II.
Iwo Jima, a volcanic island about 660 miles south of Tokyo, was of interest to the U.S. military because of its use by Japanese forces to launch fighter aircraft. After taking off from Iwo Jima airfields, these planes intercepted U.S. B-29 bombers and attacked critical airfields on the U.S.-occupied Mariana Islands.
In response, officials decided the military needed to capture Iwo Jima from the Japanese. Following months of attacks by air and sea, the Marines launched their ground invasion on February 19, 1945. The brutal battle that ensued lasted 36 days, resulting in the deaths of roughly 7,000 Marines. Another 20,000 were wounded in combat. By March 26, 1945, the United States declared control of the island.
Rosenthal’s iconic shot came early in the bloody campaign, and its fame can be partly attributed to the danger the photographer faced on assignment. He recounted navigating volcanic ash, Japanese mines and enemy fire to reach Mount Suribachi, the island’s most prominent feature, after hearing over the radio that a group of Marines was preparing to raise the American flag there.
The photographer promptly filed his photos with editor F.A. Resch, who in turn published dozens of images from that day to the Associated Press newswire. The most iconic of these shows six Marines raising the American flag, using their bodies to push the flagpole upright and mark Allied dominance of the island.
The photograph actually depicts the second flag-raising on the hill—an event that took place when Marines replaced a small American flag with a larger one. That fact—and the initial misidentification of the men in the photo—would fuel decades of rumors the photo was staged. In 2016 and 2019, the U.S. Marine Corps corrected the identities of two of the men in the photo, further fueling confusion. The men portrayed are Michael Strank, Harlon Block, Franklin Sousley, Ira Hayes, Harold Schultz and Harold Keller, all Marines. Three of the participants, Strank, Block and Sousley, went on to die in later phases of the battle. Film footage taken of the flag-raising in action proves the photo’s authenticity, though the original copy has been lost.
Resch and the dozens of publications that received Rosenthal’s photos immediately grasped their significance. So did the American public, who understood the importance of the first documented Allied flag-raising on Japanese soil. Resch wrote along with his submission of Rosenthal’s work to the Pulitzer Prize Board that “the endless citations which have been made in connection with the flag-raising picture—in Congress, as the basis for the Seventh War Loan drive, as the basis for numerous statue and memorial suggestions—are unprecedented in the history of news pictures.”
Officials quickly capitalized on the photo, using an illustration based on Rosenthal’s portrait to raise $26 billion in war bonds. The photographer won that year’s Pulitzer Prize for Photography.
Now beloved as a symbol of American military courage and further memorialized in Arlington, Virginia, as the Marine Corps War Memorial, Rosenthal’s image was seen as a sign of hope for viewers on the home front, who interpreted the flag-raising as a sign that the Pacific war was almost over.
However, fighting continued for several more months, a delay that left some Americans feeling increasingly desperate for the war’s end. Some historians have since argued that Rosenthal’s photos inadvertently drummed up support for the atomic bomb by fueling public impatience with the continued war.
For Rosenthal, though, the takeaway was short and sweet. “The Marines at Iwo Jima were magnificent.”
