John Bradley (Navy) - Post-raising Views

Post-raising Views

He rarely spoke of the raising of the flag, stating once that he "just happened to be there". His son James Bradley (who wrote a book about the flag-raisers in 2000 titled Flags of Our Fathers) speculated that his father's determined silence and discomfort on the subject of his role in the Battle of Iwo Jima was largely due to memories of John's best friend, Ralph "Iggy" Ignatowski. In his own words, and only once, he briefly told his son what happened with "Iggy". From the book Flags of Our Fathers:

I have tried so hard to block this out. To forget it. We could choose a buddy to go in with. My buddy was a guy from Milwaukee. We were pinned down in one area. Someone elsewhere fell injured and I ran to help out, and when I came back my buddy was gone. I couldn’t figure out where he was. I could see all around, but he wasn’t there. And nobody knew where he was. A few days later someone yelled that they’d found him. They called me over because I was a corpsman. The Japanese had pulled him underground and tortured him. His fingernails... his tongue... It was terrible. I’ve tried hard to forget all this." —John Bradley

According to James Bradley, as recounted in Flags of our Fathers, official reports revealed Ignatowski was captured, dragged into a tunnel by Japanese soldiers during the battle, and was later found with his eyes, ears, fingernails, and tongue removed, his teeth smashed, the back of his head caved in, multiple bayonet wounds to the abdomen, and his arms broken. John Bradley's recollections of discovering and taking care of Ignatowski's remains haunted him until his death, and he suffered for many years from Post-traumatic stress disorder.

John Bradley rarely spoke of the flag raising, having seen it as an insignificant event in a devastating battle. He rarely talked to people about it and spent most of his life trying to escape the attention he drew from raising it. Bradley only spoke to his wife once about the raising during their 47 year marriage. That was on their first date, and he seemed very uninterested with it during the conversation. His daughter Barbara said that “Reading a book on Iwo Jima at home would have been like reading a playgirl magazine…it would have been something I had to hide.” . He told his children more than once that the only real heroes on Iwo Jima were those that did not survive. Bradley never told his family that he received the Navy Cross, and they only found out after his death.

Bradley refused to talk to reporters and avoided them at all costs. Throughout his life, the press would contact his home to ask for interviews and he trained his wife and children to give excuses such as he “was on a fishing trip in Canada.” Even during the filming of the movie the Sands of Iwo Jima in 1949, Bradley told his wife to tell the townspeople that he was “on a business trip” in order to avoid attention that would be drawn to him.” Despite his reluctance to talk to the media, family, and friends about the incident, he told his parents in a letter shortly after the battle that raising the flag was “the happiest moment of my life.”

In 1985, during the only interview Bradley ever conducted about the flag raising, Bradley said he would not have raised the flag if he would have known how famous the photo would have become. He stated that he did not want to live with the pressures of the media and desired to live a normal life. . He also stated during the interview that anyone on the island could have raised the flag and that he was just there at the right time.

The Battalion Aid Station for the United States Marine Corps Officer Candidates School at Marine Corps Base (MCB) Quantico is named in honor of John Bradley.

The School house located in Camp Johnson for Field Medical Training Battalion- East is also named after John Bradley.