Some people spend an entire lifetime wondering if they've made a difference.
The Marines don't have that problem. It has become the most reproduced picture in the history of photography. Public demand to erect a monument memorializing this moment in American military history was strong in the wake of the Second World War's end. Felix DeWeldon was commissioned to design and sculpt a statue depicting the event. In fact, DeWeldon had been so struck by Rosenthal's photograph when it appeared in newspapers, he constructed a scale model and later a life-size one from it while in the service of the U.S. Navy during the war.