Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima

"one of the most significant and recognizable images in history,
and possibly the most reproduced photograph of all time"

"Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima" is an historic photograph taken on February 23, 1945 by Joe Rosenthal. It depicts five United States Marines and a U.S. Navy corpsman raising the flag of the United States atop Mount Suribachi during the Battle of Iwo Jima in World War II.

The photograph was instantly popular, being reprinted in hundreds of publications. Later, it became the only photograph to win the Pulitzer Prize for Photography in the same year as its publication, and ultimately came to be regarded as one of the most significant and recognizable images in history, and possibly the most reproduced photograph of all time.

Of the six men depicted in the picture, three (Franklin Sousley, Harlon Block, and Michael Strank) did not survive the battle; the three survivors (John Bradley, Rene Gagnon, and Ira Hayes) became instant celebrities upon the publication of the photograph.

The photograph was later used by Felix de Weldon to sculpt the USMC War Memorial (above), located adjacent to Arlington National Cemetery just outside Washington, D.C.

Austrian sculptor Felix de Weldon, was also responsible for designing the bronze Tugu Negara (above), the Malaysian National Monument, which many see, unsurprisingly, as a poor copy of the USMC War Memorial.

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