US Marines Raised the Flag on Iwo Jima 72 Years Ago

By Published on February 23, 2017

Six U.S. service members raised the U.S. flag on Mt. Suribachi during the Battle for Iwo Jima 72 years ago, a monumental moment captured in the iconic Pulitzer Prize-winning photo by Joe Rosenthal.

Three of the Marines photographed were killed in the following days of the battle. The photo was widely hailed in the U.S. and has become a symbol of the U.S. effort in World War II and the U.S Marine Corps. The photo was later memorialized in 1954 at the U.S. Marine Corps Memorial in Arlington, Va.

The photo engendered some controversy in the summer of 2016 after the U.S. Marine Corps admitted it had misidentified one of the men in the photo. The misidentified man, Navy corpsman John Bradley, rose again to international fame after his son wrote a best-selling 2000 book detailing his father’s role in the battle.

The man actually pictured in the photograph, Corporal Harold Schulz, died in 1995 and never publicly disputed the originally identified service-members in the photograph. Schulz’s family told The New York Times, he only mentioned his role a few years before he died. When his step-daughter heard the news she reportedly told him, “My gosh, Harold, you’re a hero,” to which replied “No, I was a Marine.”

 

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Copyright 2017 The Daily Caller News Foundation

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