Immortalized in a photograph one government official pledged would be seen “more widely than any other picture has been displayed in history,” at least one of the surviving Marines captured raising a U.S. flag on Iwo Jima that day never made peace with his sudden thrust into fame.
Arizona’s own Private First Class Ira Hayes – along with Corporal Harlon Block, Corporal Harold Keller, Private First Class Harold Schultz, Private First Class Franklin Sousley, and Sergeant Michael Strank – were etched into history when Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal snapped the image of the Marines of Easy Company of the 28th Regiment, 5th Division, raising an American flag atop the rocky island of Mount Suribachi, Iwo Jima, south of Japan, 80 years ago this month, on Feb. 23, 1945.
In a moment that lasted mere seconds, Rosenthal’s Pulitzer Prize-winning photo, with Hayes on the far left, became one of the most enduring images of World War II. The picture was used on war-bond posters that Hayes and two other survivors from that battle went on tour to sell, on a U.S. postage stamp, and later as the basis for the U.S. Marine Corps War Memorial in Washington.
