75 years since the Battle for Iwo Jima and Joe Rosenthal's award winning Raising the Flag photograph
On February 23, 1945, 33-year old AP photographer Joe Rosenthal captured what may be the most famous photograph of World War II: an image of six U.S. Marines raising the American flag atop Mount Suribachi on the Pacific island of Iwo Jima. When the fighting ended on March 26, 1945, the Marines had suffered 26,000 casualties with 6,281 dead. Of the 22,060 Japanese soldiers defending the island, 18,844 died in the fighting or by suicide.
In this image provided by the U.S. Marine Corps, Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal, serving with the wartime still picture pool, surveys the landing beaches at Iwo Jima, Japan on March 7, 1945. (AP Photo/U.S. Marine Corps)
U.S. Marines of the 28th Regiment, 5th Division, raise the American flag atop Mt. Suribachi, Iwo Jima, on Feb. 23, 1945. The battle that raged there was the bloodiest in Marine Corps history. The Americans were fighting to secure air fields needed for a possible invasion of Japan. The Japanese were fighting for their homeland on their homeland for the first time. From left: Ira Hayes, Harold Schultz, Michael Strank, Harold Keller (obscured), Franklin Sousley, and Harlon Block. (AP Photo/Joe Rosenthal)
Rosenthal, who was himself too nearsighted for military service, was already a veteran of the Pacific theater, having covered the battles for New Guinea, Hollandia, Guam, Peleliu and Angaur.
Marines land on the island of Guam, July 21, 1944. (AP Photo/Joe Rosenthal)
But it was Rosenthal’s picture of the American flag going up on Mount Suribachi that captured the world’s imagination. Rosenthal made the picture about noon on D-Day Plus Four. He hoped it would come out well. Later, he returned to the troop ship El Dorado to caption the film and put it on the plane to Guam. Photo editor Jack Bodkin developed the film and, recognizing one extraordinary frame, sent it by Navy radio to San Francisco where it was distributed over AP’s Wirephoto network and published in the Sunday papers.
This is a full frame scan of the 4x5 negative of Joe Rosenthal's iconic Iwo Jima flag-raising photo, taken on Feb. 23, 1945 and preserved in the Associated Press Photo Library in New York City. (AP Photo/Sean Thompson)
This is the original negative envelope for the image on the right, typed by AP staff photographer Joe Rosenthal while aboard the command ship El Dorado on March 2, 1945. (AP Photo/Sean Thompson)
Two U.S. Marines, slumped in death, lie where they fell on Iwo Jima, among the first victims of Japanese gunfire as the American conquest of the strategic Japanese Volcano Island begins on Feb. 19, 1945 during World War II. (AP Photo/Joe Rosenthal)
Al Resch, AP Chief of Photos, quickly submitted the photograph for the Pulitzer prize, and it won on early submission. After great public clamor, the U.S. Post Office issued a commemorative 3-cent stamp. The U.S. Treasury created a color lithograph from the image for use on 3.5 million posters for the Seventh War Bond Drive, which raised $26 billion for the war effort.
This is an undated photo of the three cent green 1945 postage stamp commemorating the capture of Iwo Jima by U.S. Marines during World War II. (AP Photo)
“When I look at a copy of that picture, myself, I don’t know, almost invariably, I see D-Day. I see what it took out of a lot of young men to get to that point, and I feel a strange kind of, yes---I’m as egocentric I think as any news photographer. I feel a gratification that the use of the picture, in general, has been very good uses.
But I see what had to be gone through before those Marines, with that flag, or with any flag, got up to the top of that mountain and secured the highest point, perhaps, in the entire battle, the most important ground to be taken by those Marines.”
(Joe Rosenthal, AP Oral History Interview with Hal Buell, 1997)
Learn more about Joe Rosenthal and flag raising at Iwo Jima
Text written by Francesca Pitaro and Valerie Komor, AP Corporate Archives.