page_title: Ira Hayes
section_title: First Flag-raising
hierarchical_section_title: Ira Hayes / US Marine Corps / World War II / First Flag-raising
caption_attribution_description: English: ID: DNSD0311845; Service Depicted: Other Service 010928N0271M009; Aerial view of Mount Surabuchi on the Island of Iwo Jima, Japan. Camera Operator: PHAN LEE MCCASKILL, USN; Date Shot: 28 Sep 2001
context_page_description: Ira Hamilton Hayes was a Pima Native American and a United States Marine during World War II. Hayes was an enrolled member of the Gila River Pima Indian Reservation located in the Pinal and Maricopa counties in Arizona. He enlisted in the United States Marine Corps Reserve on August 26, 1942, and, after recruit training, volunteered to become a Paramarine. He fought in the Bougainville and Iwo Jima campaigns in the Pacific War.
  Hayes was generally known as one of the six flag raisers immortalized in the iconic photograph Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima by photographer Joe Rosenthal. The first flag raised over Mount Suribachi on February 23, 1945 at the south end of Iwo Jima, was deemed too small and replaced the same day by a larger flag. As there was no photograph of the first flag-raising, the second flag-raising photograph which included Hayes in it, became famous and was widely reproduced. After the battle, Hayes and two other men were identified as surviving second flag-raisers and were reassigned to help raise funds for the Seventh War Loan drive.
context_section_description: On February 23, Lieutenant Colonel Chandler W. Johnson, the Second Battalion commander, ordered a combat patrol to climb, seize, and occupy the top of Mount Suribachi and raise the battalion's flag if possible to signal it was secure. Captain Dave Severance, commander of E Company, organized a 40-man patrol taken from the remainder of his Third Platoon and the battalion. First Lieutenant Harold Schrier, the company's executive officer, was chosen by Lt. Col. Johnson to be in command of the patrol. At 8:30 am, the patrol started to climb the east slope of Suribachi. The patrol included two Navy corpsmen and stretcher bearers. Less than an hour later, after receiving occasional Japanese sniper fire, the patrol reached the rim of the volcano. After a brief firefight there, Lt. Schrier and his men captured the summit. After finding a Japanese steel pipe and attaching the flag to it, the flagstaff was taken to the highest place on the crater. At about 10:30 a.m., Lt. Schrier, Platoon Sergeant Ernest Thomas, Sergeant Henry Hansen, and Corporal Charles Lindberg raised the flag. Seeing the raising of the national colors immediately caused loud cheering from the Marines, sailors, and Coast Guardsmen on the beach below and from the men on the ships docked at the beach. Due to the high winds on Mount Suribachi, Sgt. Hansen, Private Phil Ward, and Navy corpsman John Bradley pitched in to help make the flagstaff stay in a vertical position. The men at, around, and holding the flagstaff were photographed several times by Marine Staff Sergeant Louis R. Lowery, a photographer with Leatherneck magazine who accompanied the patrol up the mountain.  Platoon Sgt. Thomas was killed on Iwo Jima on March 3 and Sgt. Hansen was killed on March 1.
caption: Mount Suribachi on Iwo Jima
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