Iwo Jima
Joe Rosenthal
The battle of Iwo Jima cost the lives of nearly seven thousand Americans, most of them Marines, and twenty-one thousand Japanese defenders. The small volcanic island 750 miles south-east of Tokyo was strategically important and was strenuously defended by Japanese troops and only won by the Americans after weeks of aerial and naval bombardment and nearly a month of ground fighting.
Joe Rosenthal’s award-winning photograph of the American flag being raised on Iwo Jima in February 1945 became the subject of a great controversy because it was not the first flag to be raised.
When Rosenthal reached the summit of Mount Suribachi he was told that the flag had already being raised but an officer below had ordered that it be taken down and replaced with a larger one that could be seen from anywhere on the island.
This was the flag that Rosenthal photographed and because of this he was accused of staging the photograph. Over the years he has been called everything from a hero to a fraud, but the fact remains that his photo was one of the greatest of the Pacific War and one of the most published.
It was reproduced on 3.5 million posters as a symbol for the Seventh War Loan drive, it appeared on a postage stamp, it was used as a model for the Marine Corps War Memorial in Arlington, Virginia, a symbol of the valour and sacrifices of the US Marines, and appeared on the covers of countless magazines and newspapers.
The photograph won Joe Rosenthal a Pulitzer Prize in 1945.
 |
 |