APPLETON POST-CRESCENT

Son writes story father was reluctant to tell
Fri 5-May-2000

By Tom Richards
Post-Crescent staff writer

Once, years ago, an ever-recalcitrant John Bradley, the last survivor of the famous flag raising on Iwo Jima in World War II, was confronted by a reporter in his Antigo office. It was one of the few times he ever commented, however tersely, on that event.

Bradley, one of the six American servicemen immortalized in the photograph of the flag- raising, had carefully avoided reporters in the years since the war. In fact, he had carefully avoided almost any discussion of that picture, the war or his part in it.

The striking photograph may be the most famous photograph ever and certainly was the most famous of World War II. Nothing else captured the hearts of the nation and - for that matter, the world - the way this one did.

It is a fascinating story, the story of the battle and of the boys who fought it and of those six young men who raised the flag, and it is told compellingly in a new book, "Flags of Our Fathers," written by one of Bradley's sons, James.

"I didn't set out to write a book, I set out to find my father," he said in an interview. He apparently did. He also found some other people, notably those who raised that flag, and they are a surprising cross-section of America, almost like one of those war movies that has representatives of numerous subcultures.

There was Franklin Sousley, the freckle-faced kid from Kentucky. And Harlon Block from the Rio Grande Valley of Texas; Ira Hayes, the solemn, solitary Pima Indian from Arizona; Rene Gagnon of Manchester, N.H., handsome and shy; Mike Strank, Franklin Borough, Pa., smart and tough, from a mill town.

And John Bradley, who grew up in Appleton, and as a boy was a serious kid, determined, steadfast. Before he was out of high school, he knew someday he wanted to own a funeral home.

He wanted to marry Betty Van Gorp. He wanted to be a respected part of his church and community. And he didn't want a spotlight.

In fact, he seemed determined not to let that singular photograph or his participation in it interfere with his life. Not that he could ever really do that, his son said.

Like it or not, it was a defining moment for all six, a trivial event in the grander scheme of things and yet a monumental accident. Sousley, Block and Strank died on Iwo Jima.

The flag they raised was indeed the second American flag raised on Mount Suribachi, the high point on the tiny island that the Japanese held so fiercely. It was bigger and higher than the first, on a long section of pipe, and six guys who just happened to be in the vicinity were called on to raise it.

Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal, who won a Pulitzer Prize for the photo, saw it, snapped it and in a 400th of a second made the six servicemen heroes in the public eye.

It was a key battle in the Pacific war, and a bloody one, as Bradley describes in the book. Over 36 days, the United States counted almost 26,000 casualties, of them 7,000 killed. The Japanese lost most of the 22,000 men who defended the island.

John Bradley was a Navy corpsman, a medic, who saw countless of his buddies die. He himself went to his grave with shrapnel in his leg.

He rarely talked about it, said James Bradley. In fact, he was the block to James' inquiries, and it wasn't until his death in 1994 that he learned most of what he knows today about his father's part in World War II.

In a box in his father's office, for example, he discovered that his father had won the Navy Cross for his bravery on Iwo Jima, for treating his fallen comrades - not for the flag-raising.

He had gone on a bond tour with Gagnon and Hayes. At a time when the federal budget was $56 billion, the three in two months raised $24 billion to finance the war. That tour visited Appleton for a Flag Day parade, and Bradley spoke:

"The word hero is embarrassing to us. We were on that picture by accident. There were 60,000 men on that island. They're the heroes. We were just doing our jobs."

Typical. John Bradley came home. He married Betty Van Gorp. They moved to Antigo, where he eventually owned a funeral home. He was a respected member of his church, an important member of the community in his own right, not because of that picture.

He spoke to that reporter long ago of the pipe that was the flagpole: "Just because there was a flag on it, that made the difference."

The reporter dismissed it as "an oddly irrelevant afterthought." James Bradley thinks that it is the essence of the story.

* James Bradley, author of "Flags of Our Fathers," will be at Conkey's Bookstore, 226 E.

College Ave., Appleton, at 1 p.m. May 13. The Appleton Heritage Society is raising funds for a John Bradley Memorial in front of Appleton West High School. The memorial will be dedicated on Veterans Day Nov. 11.