This Day in History
Forty-three years ago today, six U.S. marines raised the American flag atop Mount Suribachi on the island of Iwo Jima. The men were Ira Hayes, Rene Gagnon, John Bradley, Mike Strank, Harlon Block and Franklin Sousley, and only three of them (Hayes, Gagnon and Bradley) survived the war.
The most widely reproduced photo of the war, the flag raising depicted in Joe Rosenthal’s Pulitzer prize-winning photo was actually the second raising on Mount Suribachi. Also, at the time, there was a mix up of who the sixth man was in the photo: Harlon Block or Hank Hansen.
The book (written by the son of survivor, Navy Corpsman John Bradley), and later the film (directed by Clint Eastwood), Flags of Our Fathers, gives an account of the flag raising and the lives of the six men who inspired a nation.
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