March 21, 1945: The Final Flames of Iwo Jima — The Real Story Behind the Flag Raisers

One Photograph Changed a War

Imagine it. February 1945 in the Pacific, a small volcanic island reeking of sulfur. As shells explode ceaselessly, six Marines hoist a heavy iron flagpole. And click — AP photographer Joe Rosenthal's shutter captured history.

The photograph won the Pulitzer Prize and became one of the most reproduced images in American history. But the real stories of the heroes in the photo are far more complex, and far more heartbreaking, than we know.

Hell Island Iwo Jima: Why This Place?

Iwo Jima is a volcanic island located about 1,200 km south of Tokyo. Its area is roughly three times the size of Seoul's Yeouido district. But its strategic value was enormous. Sitting right in the middle of the B-29 bomber route to mainland Japan, it served as a Japanese radar base and fighter launch point.

On February 19, 1945, approximately 70,000 U.S. Marines began the landing. The Japanese garrison numbered about 21,000. Though outnumbered, they had transformed the entire island into a spider web of underground tunnel fortifications. The Battle of Iwo Jima is recorded as one of the fiercest battles in U.S. military history: approximately 7,000 American dead, over 20,000 wounded. Japanese forces suffered losses approaching total annihilation.

The Flag Was Raised Twice

On February 23, Marines first reached the summit of Mount Suribachi and planted a small American flag. But commanders wanted a bigger, more visible flag, and a second flag-raising took place hours later. It was this second scene that Rosenthal captured.

By March 21, after 36 days of bloody combat, the battle was essentially heading toward its conclusion. Suribachi had already fallen, but final resistance continued in the northern part of the island. From this date onward, organized Japanese resistance effectively collapsed.

The Irony of Being Called Heroes

Three of the six men in the photograph were killed on Iwo Jima before the battle ended. The three survivors — Ira Hayes, Rene Gagnon, and John Bradley — were recalled home to become the faces of a war bond sales campaign. Ira Hayes, a Native American of Pima descent, said he was not a hero and that the real heroes were buried on Iwo Jima, but the world did not listen.

An even more shocking twist emerged in 2019. An official U.S. Marine Corps investigation confirmed that one of the men in the photo was not John Bradley, as had been believed, but Harold Schultz. For nearly 80 years, the wrong name had been remembered.

In Film and Television

Director Clint Eastwood took on the challenge of telling this story through two simultaneous films in 2006. "Flags of Our Fathers" delicately portrays the guilt and confusion felt by the three surviving soldiers as they are elevated to hero status. Rather than a glamorous war hero tale, its anti-war perspective asking "What is a hero?" is particularly striking. Where it diverges from actual history is in the somewhat dramatized depiction of John Bradley's wartime experience — which connects to the identity misidentification controversy mentioned above.

Released the same year, "Letters from Iwo Jima" depicts the same battle from the perspective of Japanese commander Tadamichi Kuribayashi. It generated significant attention as a Hollywood film that portrayed the human side of the enemy.

The HBO miniseries "The Pacific" surveys the entire Pacific War from Guadalcanal to Okinawa, delivering the raw brutality of Iwo Jima as it was.

Beyond One Photograph

Six hands raised the flag atop Mount Suribachi. Half of those hands became the soil of Iwo Jima, and the other half had to carry the weight of being called "heroes" for the rest of their lives. History is often remembered through a single image, but within that image lie thousands of stories we have yet to fully read.

Today, we remember that island.