It was a picture so perfect that some people thought it must have been staged. But Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal’s image of six Marines raising the American flag over the Japanese island of Iwo Jima on February 23, 1945, was very much the real thing.
The battle for the small but strategically important island had been one of the bloodiest of the war. Nearly 7,000 Americans were killed, more than 19,000 wounded. On the Japanese side, casualties were even higher.
Rosenthal learned that the Marines planned to plant a flag atop the island’s Mount Suribachi after securing the volcanic peak, a major early objective in the brutal battle for the island. He had started up the mountain when a Marine photographer making his way down told him the flag raising had already occurred. Rosenthal decided to keep climbing and see for himself.
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