Joe Rosenthal has died at age 94.
Photographer Joe Rosenthal in the field during World War II
His photograph of the flag-raising atop Mount Suribachi on Feb. 23, 1945, may be the most widely reproduced photo in American history. It was re-created on at least 3.5 million Treasury Department posters publicizing a massive war-bond campaign. It was engraved on three-cent Marine Corps commemorative stamps that broke Post Office records for first-day cancellations in 1945. It was reproduced as a 100-ton Marine Corps War Memorial bronze sculpture near Arlington National Cemetery. And it brought Mr. Rosenthal a Pulitzer Prize.
I remember reading Joe's own account of the picture. He had gone to the summit of the extinct volcano to shoot photos of the first flag to be raised, not knowing it was to be taken down. The battalion commander of the Marine unit that raised it ordered it brought back because it was too small to be seen across the island and out to sea; he also knew that Navy Secretary Frank Knox was afloat offshore and was worried that some brasshat would order the flag be given to Knox. The Marine commander was determined it go to the regimental museum.
Mr. Rosenthal said he was lucky to catch the flag-raising at its most dramatic instant, producing a masterpiece of composition acclaimed as a work of art.
“The sky was overcast, but just enough sunlight fell from almost directly overhead, because it happened to be about noon, to give the figures a sculptural depth,” he wrote in Collier’s magazine on the 10th anniversary of the flag-raising.
“The 20-foot pipe was heavy, which meant the men had to strain to get it up, imparting that feeling of action,” he wrote. “The wind just whipped the flag out over the heads of the group, and at their feet the disrupted terrain and the broken stalks of the shrubbery exemplified the turbulence of war.”
Joe coped for years after the war with accusations that the photo was posed, but it wasn't, as Sgt. Genaust's movie proves. Moreover, as news photos go (Joe was an AP wire photographer), the shot is very poor. Some of the men can hardly be seen and none of them are facing the camera. It didn't matter.
“The characters create an ascending motion, but they’re frozen in time in a brilliantly precise way,” Alan Trachtenberg, the author of “Reading American Photographs: Images as History, Mathew Brady to Walker Evans,” said in a 1997 interview with The New York Times. “And it’s more than just raising a flag. It’s a sense of culmination, of triumph, not just over an enemy but over the challenge of war itself. It’s become an iconic image, like Uncle Sam.”
Fifty-six years later, that iconic image still resonated in the aftermath of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
New York City firemen raising a flag near the ruins of the World Trade Center
As had been done in 1945 with Joe's photo, many newspapers in America published full-page versions of this photo. Yet, inspiring as this shot was at the time (and still is), its emotional effect depended on Joe's decades-old work.
The men raising the flag were Pfc. Ira Hayes, Pfc. Franklin Sousley, Pharmacist’s Mate 2d Class John Bradley (a Navy corpsman), Sgt. Michael Strank, Pfc. Rene Gagnon and Cpl. Harlon Block of Texas. Bradley and Strank cannot be clearly seen in the picture.
Although depicting sacrifice, courage and determination, the photo did not depict triumph. The battle for Iwo Jima raged another month. Of the Marines in Joe's photo, Pfc. Sousley, Sgt. Strank, Sgt. Hansen and Cpl. Block were killed in action. Sergeant Genaust, who took the movie of the flag raising, also was killed. Navy Corpsman John Bradley was awarded the Navy Cross for later heroism.
After the war, Joe Rosenthal worked for The San Francisco Chronicle after the war until his retirement in 1981.
To capture the raising flag, Rosenthal piled up some stones and a sandbag so he had something on which to stand, as he was only 1.65m (5 feet 5 inches) tall. He set his camera for a lens setting between f/8 and f/11 and put the speed at 1/400th second.
My Uncle Ln. Cpl. Carl Keepers was there. He told me, that at the time all it ment was that the F@#king Japs were no longer shooting from that direction.
Semper Fi Uncle Carl