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Six United States Marines raised the American flag atop Mount Suribachi amid horrific combat on Iwo Jima, the intense wartime scene captured in perfect angle and frame by photographer Joseph Rosenthal, on this day in history, Feb. 23, 1945.
The raw power of the image instantly gripped a nation at war with Nazi Germany in Europe and imperial Japan in the Pacific — young American fighting men unfurling the Stars and Stripes on a remote island far from home in World War II.
Its power endures today.
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“The flag raising became a symbol synonymous with American victory in World War II and what the nation can accomplish when we all pull together and unite for a just cause,” Owen Connor, senior curator of the National Museum of the Marine Corps, told Fox News Digital
The photograph hit the front page of almost every newspaper in the United States within days.
View of members of the United States Marine Corps 5th Division as they raise an American flag on Mount Suribachi during the Battle of Iwo Jima, Feb. 23, 1945. (Joe Rosenthal/Photo 12/Universal Images Group via Getty Images)
It’s been duplicated and admired endlessly through the decades and endures as the most powerful image of heroism in American history.
The Marines in the photo represent a broad cross-section of the American people.
“The photo became in many ways one of the first media events of the 20th century.” — Owen Connor, National Museum of the Marine Corps
The latest research indicates that the men are, from left: Pfc. Ira Hayes, 22, a book-loving Pima native from Sacaton, Arizona; Pfc. Harold Schultz, 20, of Detroit, who lied about his age to join the Corps after Pearl Harbor; Sgt. Michael Strank, 25, born in what’s now Slovakia and raised in Franklin Borough, Pennsylvania; Pfc. Franklin Sousley, 19, a factory worker from Hill Top, Kentucky; Harold Keller, 23, a telephone lineman from…
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