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70th Anniversary of Flag Raising on Iwo Jima
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23-02-2015 12:26pm#1
On 23 February after four days of bitter fighting the U.S. Marines reached the summit of Mt Suribachi on the tip of Iwo Jima island. A small American flag was raised on the summit by a group of Marines who fought their way to the top before it was replaced with a second larger one by a group of six men who hung it on a spare length of ventilation pipe.
The moment of the second flag raising was captured by the photographer Joe Rosenthal and the motion picture cameraman Bill Genaust. The five men who raised the second flag, Ira Hayes, Franklin Sousley, Michael Strank, John Bradley, Rene Gagnon, and Harlon Block continued to fight on and in the next few days, Sousley, Strank and Block were killed in action.
The surviving three men - two Marines, Gagnon and Hayes who was a native American and Bradley, a U.S. Navy medic - were plucked from the island and flown to the United States as part of a bond selling drive. The men traveled the length and breath of the U.S. speaking in front of huge crowds, recreated the flag raising in front of packed sports stadiums and were interviewed by newspapers and motion picture newsreels. They met President Truman in the Oval Office of the White House and their exploits were commemorated in paintings and postage stamps. The photo of the flag raising became as famous and was as widely reproduced as the painting of George Washington crossing the Delaware. Not until a group of firemen at Ground Zero were photographed raising the American flag in 2001 would a photo grab the emotions of the American people.
For Bradley and Hayes, the incident was a non-event. They were simply the closest men nearby and they were directed to replace the smaller flag with a bigger one. They disliked the publicity drive they were required to take part in and were happy to disappear into obscurity once it was over. The handsome Rene Gagnon and his pretty celebrity hungry wife for a time naively dreamed of Hollywood stardom but their hopes never materialized. Bradley, Gagnon and Hayes appeared briefly as themselves in the John Wayne movie "The Sands of Iwo Jima." The photograph of the flag raising was also the basis of the US Marine Corps War Memorial in Washington D.C. The three surviving men attended the unveiling of the memorial in 1954.
Bradley and Gagnon returned to civilian life after the war and became anonymous family men like millions of other men who served in the armed forces during World War 2. Bradley wanted to forget the war and it was not until decades later his son learned the full story and wrote the bestselling history book "Flags Of Our Fathers" which became the basis of the Clint Eastwood directed movie.
Ira Hayes, deeply traumatized by his battlefield experiences and guilty that he lived while his friends died, disgraced himself by drinking heavily during the bond drive and descended into alcohol abuse after the war. In and out of prison he died in 1955 from exposure although his brother who fought in the Korean War believed his death was the result of a drunken fight with a friend. Hayes was the subject of the movie "The Outsider" starring Tony Curtis in 1959.
Before he died Hayes had met the family of Harlon Block to confirm that their son rather than Henry Hansen was one of the men raising the flag in Rosenthal's photo. Hansen had in fact taken part in the original flag raising.
Many Americans believed the flag raising was the end of the battle of Iwo Jima. In fact the fighting continued until organized Japanese resistance ended 26 March. The Americans suffered horrendous casualties during the initial landing and the taking of Mount Suribachi. The Japanese had transformed the entire island into a vast fortress with miles of caves and tunnels linking vast numbers of fortified positions. For the young Marines fighting on the island the battle became an unforgiving meat grinder with whole squads, platoons, companies and battalions gradually being wounded and killed. Almost 7,000 Americans died - more than would die in the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan decades later - and almost 20,000 were wounded.
The garrison of about 20,000 Japanese fought fanatically until they were burned out of their positions with flamethrowers or entombed alive with explosives. Only about 200 survived and the last Japanese holdouts surrendered in 1949. The battle of Iwo Jima and the subsequent battle of Okinawa in which Japanese soldiers once again fought with suicidal fanaticism convinced the U.S. to use the atomic bombs on Japanese cities so that an invasion of the home island would not be necessary. The Japanese strategy was to make every American gain as bloody and as costly as humanly possible. It was feared a conventional invasion of Japan would cause vast casualties to American forces.
The official justification given for the taking the island was for landing and refueling of American B-29 bombers returning from Japan. However others claimed that the use of the island was wildly over stated and the effect on the outcome of the war was marginal for the loss of so many lives.2
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