Claim: On Friday morning, February 23, 1945, four days after the Marines landed at Iwo Jima, Rosenthal hurried toward Suribachi, lugging along his bulky Speed Graphic camera when he heard that an American flag was being raised atop 169-metre-high Mount Suribachi.
Evidence: On Friday morning, February 23, 1945, four days after the Marines landed at Iwo Jima, Rosenthal was making his daily visit to the island on a Marine landing craft when he heard that an American flag was being raised atop Mount Suribachi, a volcano at the southern tip of the island. Upon landing, Rosenthal hurried toward Suribachi, lugging along his bulky Speed Graphic camera, the standard for press photographers at the time. On the high and windy summit of Mount Suribachi, Rosenthal discovered a group of Marines attaching a large flag to a length of steel pipe. Mount Suribachi (摺鉢山, Suribachiyama) is a 169-metre (554 ft)-high mountain on the southwest end of Iwo Jima in the northwest Pacific Ocean under the administration of Ogasawara Subprefecture, Tokyo Metropolis, Japan.