Raising the Flag
Charles Johnson
Wed Feb 23, 2005 at 11:39 am PST • Views: 1,903
On the sixtieth anniversary of the raising of the US flag on Iwo Jima, here’s an account of that day: Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima.
The Secretary of the Navy, James Forrestal, had decided the previous night that he wanted to go ashore and witness the final stage of the fight for the mountain. Now, under a stern commitment to take order from Howlin’ Mad Smith, the secretary was churning ashore in the company of the blunt, earthy general. Their boat touched the beach just after the flag went up, and the mood among the high command turned jubilant. Gazing upward, at the red, white, and blue speck, Forrestal remarked to Smith: ‘Holland, the raising of that flag on Suribachi means a Marine Corps for the next five hundred years’.
Forrestal was so taken with fervor of the moment that he decided he wanted the Suribachi flag as a souvenir. The news of this wish did not sit well with Chandler Johnson, whose temperament was every bit as fiery as Howlin Mad’s. ‘To hell with that!’ the colonel spat when the message reached him. The flag belonged to the battalion, as far as Johnson was concerned. He decided to secure it as soon as possible, and dispatched his assistant operations officer, Lieutenant Ted Tuttle, to the beach to scare up a replacement flag. As an afterthought, Johnson called after Tuttle ‘And make it a bigger one’”. (James Bradley, ‘Flags of Our Fathers’, p.207)
That order made its way down the ranks, until the five marines of Company E (2nd Battalion, 28th Regiment, 5th Marine Division) got the order. They raised the US flag using an old water pipe for a flagpost. Of the six men pictured (Michael Strank, Rene Gagnon, Ira Hayes, Franklin Sousley, John Bradley, and Harlon Block) only three (Hayes, Gagnon, and Bradley) survived the battle.
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Ground Zero photograph (c) 2001 The Record, (Bergen County, NJ)
Frank says: