The Seventh War Bond Drive and The Sixth Man Controversy
Upon seeing the photo, President Franklin D. Roosevelt realized the picture would make an excellent symbol for the upcoming seventh war bond drive, and ordered the Marines identified and brought home. The Marines were brought home at the conclusion of the battle. Using a photo enlargement, Rene Gagnon identified the others in the photograph, but refused to identify the sixth man (Hayes), insisting he had promised to keep the man's name a secret. Gagnon had promised not to discuss Hayes' identity because Hayes—who despised Gagnon—had threatened to kill him. After being brought to Marine Corps headquarters and informed that he was being ordered by the President to reveal the information, and that refusing an order to reveal the name would be a serious crime, Gagnon finally revealed Hayes' name.
Gagnon also misidentified Harlon Block as Sergeant Henry O. "Hank" Hansen, who had not survived the battle (but who had, incidentally, participated in the first flag-raising). Initially, John Bradley concurred with all of Gagnon's identifications. On April 8, 1945, the Marine Corps released the identification of five of the flag raisers (including Hansen)—Sousley's identity was withheld pending notification of his family of his death during the battle.
The three survivors went on a whirlwind bond tour. The tour was a success, raising $26.3 billion, twice the tour's goal.
Questions lingered about the misidentification of Harlon Block. His mother, Belle Block, refused to accept the official identification, noting that she had "changed so many diapers on that boy's butt, I know it's my boy." Immediately on arrival in Washington, D.C. on April 19, Hayes noticed the misidentification in the photo, and informed the Marine public relations officer who had been assigned to him. The public relations officer told Hayes that the identifications had already been officially released, and ordered Hayes to keep silent about it.
Over a year and a half later, suffering from depression and alcoholism that would characterize the rest of his life, Ira Hayes hitchhiked to Texas to inform Block's family that Block had, in fact, been the sixth flag raiser.
Ira remembered what Rene Gagnon and John Bradley could not have remembered, because they did not join the little cluster until the last moment: that it was Harlon, Mike, Franklin and himself who had ascended Suribachi midmorning to lay telephone wire; it was Rene who had come along with the replacement flag. Hansen had not been part of this action.
Block's mother, Belle, immediately composed a letter to her congressional representative Milton West. West, in turn, forwarded the letter to Marine Corps Commandant Alexander Vandegrift, who ordered an investigation. Both Bradley and Gagnon, upon being shown the evidence, agreed that it was probably Block and not Hansen.
Read more about this topic: Raising The Flag On Iwo Jima
Famous quotes containing the words seventh, war, bond, drive, sixth, man and/or controversy:
“I don’t know.
When my lover
comes to me
and says such loving things,
do all my parts
become eyes
or ears?”
—Amaru (c. seventh century A.D.)
“In a war everybody always knows all about Switzerland, in peace times it is just Switzerland but in war time it is the only country that everybody has confidence in, everybody.”
—Gertrude Stein (1874–1946)
“The ideal of men and women sharing equally in parenting and working is a vision still. What would it be like if women and men were less different from each other, if our worlds were not so foreign? A male friend who shares daily parenting told me that he knows at his very core what his wife’s loving for their daughter feels like, and that this knowing creates a stronger bond between them.”
—Anonymous Mother. Ourselves and Our Children, by Boston Women’s Health Book Collective, ch. 6 (1978)
“Why should I let the toad work
Squat on my life?
Can’t I use my wit as a pitchfork
And drive the brute off?”
—Philip Larkin (1922–1986)
“If you are willing to inconvenience yourself in the name of discipline, the battle is half over. Leave Grandma’s early if the children are acting impossible. Depart the ballpark in the sixth inning if you’ve warned the kids and their behavior is still poor. If we do something like this once, our kids will remember it for a long time.”
—Fred G. Gosman (20th century)
“But most of us are apt to settle within ourselves that the man who blocks our way is odious, and not to mind causing him a little of the disgust which his personality excites in ourselves.”
—George Eliot [Mary Ann (or Marian)
“And therefore, as when there is a controversy in an account, the parties must by their own accord, set up for right Reason, the Reason of some Arbitrator, or Judge, to whose sentence, they will both stand, or their controversy must either come to blows, or be undecided, for want of a right Reason constituted by Nature; so is it also in all debates of what kind soever.”
—Thomas Hobbes (1579–1688)