Shadow of Suribachi: Raising the Flags on Iwo Jima
By aiming his camera for a 400th of a second at a one-in-a-million subject, Associated Press war correspondent Joe Rosenthal won a Pulitzer Prize and immortality for the resulting photograph of U.S. Marines raising the American flag atop Mt. Suribachi on the Japanese island of Iwo Jima in the last fierce stages of WWII. In the half-century since then, controversy has simmered about the picture's authenticity as a daring feat in combat (it wasn't) rather than a staged public relations affair (it wasn't that either). The widely circulated scene captured the popular imagination, appeared on posters and a postage stamp and served as model for the U.S. Marine Corps memorial in Washington, D.C. Historians Albee and Freeman here clear up the controversy and give an account of the island campaign's savage early fighting, the thrilling moment Marines sighted their flag on the hill, the raising of a second, more visible flag (which Rosenthal photographed), the resulting journalistic confusion and the steamroller crescendo of acclaim for Rosenthal's picture as an unparalleled American icon. Photos.Copyright 1995 Reed Business Information, Inc.