Raising The Flag On Iwo Jima - Raising The Second Flag

Raising The Second Flag

On orders from Colonel Chandler Johnson—passed on by Captain Severance—Sergeant Michael Strank, Corporal Harlon H. Block, Private First Class Franklin R. Sousley, and Private First Class Ira H. Hayes spent the morning of the 23rd laying a telephone wire to the top of Suribachi. Severance also dispatched Private First Class Rene A. Gagnon, a runner, to the command post for fresh SCR-300 walkie-talkie batteries.

Meanwhile, according to the official Marine Corps history, Tuttle had found a larger (96-by-56 inch) flag in nearby Tank Landing Ship LST 779. He made his way back to the command post and gave it to Johnson. Johnson, in turn, gave it to Gagnon, with orders to take it back up Suribachi and raise it. The official Marine Corps history of the event is that Tuttle received the flag from Ensign Alan Wood of LST 779, who in turn had received the flag from a supply depot in Pearl Harbor. However, the Coast Guard Historian's Office supports claims made by Robert Resnick, who served aboard LST 758. "Before he died in November 2004, Resnick said Gagnon came aboard LST-758 the morning of February 23 looking for a flag. Resnick said he grabbed one from a bunting box and asked permission from commanding officer Lt. Felix Molenda to donate it. Resnick kept quiet about his participation until 2001." The flag itself was sewn by Mabel Sauvageau, a worker at the "flag loft" of the Mare Island Naval Shipyard.

The Marines reached the top of the mountain around noon, where Gagnon joined them. Despite the large numbers of Japanese troops in the immediate vicinity, the 40-man patrol made it to the top of the mountain without being fired on once, as the Japanese were under bombardment at the time.

Rosenthal, along with Marine photographers Bob Campbell and Bill Genaust (who was killed in action nine days after the flag-raising), was climbing Suribachi at this time. On the way up, the trio met Lowery (the man who photographed the first flag-raising). They had been considering turning around, but Lowery told them that the summit was an excellent vantage point from which to take pictures.

Rosenthal's trio reached the summit as the Marines were attaching the flag to an old Japanese water pipe. Rosenthal put his Speed Graphic camera on the ground (set to 1/400th of a second shutter speed, with the f-stop between 8 and 16) so he could pile rocks to stand on for a better vantage point. In doing so, he nearly missed the shot. Along with Navy Pharmacist's Mate Second Class John H. Bradley, the five Marines began raising the U.S. flag. Realizing he was about to miss it, Rosenthal quickly swung his camera up and snapped the photograph without using the viewfinder. Ten years after the flag-raising, Rosenthal wrote:

Out of the corner of my eye, I had seen the men start the flag up. I swung my camera and shot the scene. That is how the picture was taken, and when you take a picture like that, you don't come away saying you got a great shot. You don't know.

Bill Genaust, who was standing almost shoulder-to-shoulder with Rosenthal about thirty yards away, was shooting motion-picture film during the flag-raising. His film captures the event at an almost-identical angle to Rosenthal's famous shot.

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. Strank was killed six days after the flag-raising when a shell, likely fired from an offshore American destroyer, tore his heart out; Block was killed by a mortar a few hours after Strank; Sousley was shot and killed by a sniper on March 21, a few days before the island was declared secure.