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The true
story of Iwo Jima
By Carol Memmott, USA TODAY
A stiff wind was blowing off the Pacific when six American boys -- the
youngest was 19 -- used their combined muscle to plant a 96-by-56-inch
flag in a heap of rocks on an ugly, stinking island 650 miles from Tokyo.
As a distracted Associated Press photographer swung his camera toward the
flag-raising, he pressed his finger down on the shutter, unintentionally
capturing a millisecond of history.
On Feb. 23, 1945, the wind
unfurled the flag, stiffening it, revealing the Stars and Stripes. But the
wind was stronger than anyone could have imagined, blowing the winds of
war and misplaced fame 6,000 miles to the U.S. mainland. The photograph
gripped the American people like a tornado as it swirled up patriotism,
celebrity and an unexpected fate for the flag-raisers. Their names have
been forgotten, but no one will ever forget the name of that 2-by-5 1/2
mile hunk of slag shaped liked a pork chop -- Iwo Jima.
Thousands
of books record the battle for Iwo Jima, the most chronicled battle of
World War II and one of the bloodiest battles in history. Nearly 7,000
Americans lost their lives in the 36-day fight; more than 18,000 were
wounded. As for the island's Japanese defenders, all 22,000 were killed by
U.S. Marines or by their own hands. But more than the bloody, churning
waters, more than the stench of death, more than the screams of the dying
and wounded, the public still remembers the iconic photograph that stirred
hope and became the country's symbol of valor and victory.
In a new
book titled Flags of Our Fathers, James Bradley, son of
flag-raiser John "Doc" Bradley, with journalist Ron Powers, tells the
inside story of the six flag-raisers whose heroic image -- if not their
identities -- lives on every time busloads of tourists stop at the Iwo
Jima Memorial near Arlington Cemetery in Virginia.
"A thousand
years from now, it will be the only book about these guys, because my Dad
didn't talk and my family would never talk to an outside author," the
young Bradley says. "It needed a son to get the Bradley story, and the
other families would not have cooperated with a non-member of the
family."
Unknown heroes
Three of the
flag-raisers died on Iwo Jima before the grip of their celebrity took
hold. Mike Strank, 25, of Franklin Borough, Pa., the Marine's Marine,
idolized by his men, most likely died from friendly fire. He and Harlon
Block, 20, a star high school football player from Rio Grande Valley,
Texas, died just a week after the flag-raising , and Franklin Sousley, 19,
the laughing, good ol' boy from Hilltop, Ky., died three weeks
later.
The three surviving flag-raisers were treated as heroes when
they got home. Author Bradley compares it to Beatlemania. They were
hounded by the press, the public and memorabilia seekers for years. It was
not until the dedication of the Iwo Jima Memorial in 1954 that the image
of the flag-raisers as heroes began to fade and their roles as "anonymous
representational figures" began to take hold.
The three survivors
would wrestle with their role in the mythic flag-raising for the rest of
their lives. They would, for the most part, remember the event as the
least heroic of their moments on Iwo Jima, Bradley says. For despite the
myth that the photo was staged -- it wasn't -- neither was the flag raised
in a hailstorm of bullets and mortars as war correspondents reported. And
it wasn't the first flag raised on the island.
John Bradley would
carry the weight of the photo's notoriety longer than anyone, outsurviving
Gagnon and Hayes by 15 years.
Like many veterans, Bradley never
spoke about Iwo Jima. There was no photo of the flag-raising in the
Bradley household, and according to John's wife, Betty, he told her about
it only once in their 47 years of marriage.
Bradley's experiences
might have gone to the grave had the family not found three boxes of
papers after he died in 1994.
James Bradley then spent years
interviewing family, friends and fighting buddies of the six men. His book
is an emotional and gripping account of the madness, mayhem and the misery
of Iwo Jima. Military historian Stephen Ambrose says Bradley has produced
"the best battle book I've ever read."
Untold
stories
Artifacts can help us understand our history, and
in Bradley's case they helped him draw closer to a side of his father he
never really knew. A father so secretive that the boxes provided the
family's first knowledge that Corpsman Doc Bradley was awarded the Navy
Cross for bravery.
"I was stunned," says Bradley, "because this was
a guy who wouldn't go out in the woods behind the cottage because bears
might get him. He exhibited absolutely no aggressive
tendencies."
But with the help of Iwo survivors, Bradley patched
together this story of his father's award-winning valor: "My father
sprinted through thirty yards of saturating crossfire -- mortars and
machine guns -- to the wounded boy's side. As bullets winged and pinged
around him, Doc found the Marine losing blood at a life-threatening rate.
... He tied a plasma bottle to the kid's rifle and jammed it bayonet-first
into the ground. Then he moved his own body between the boy and the sheets
of gunfire. Then, his upper body still erect and fully exposed, he
administered first aid."
Doc Bradley would perform countless acts
of lifesaving valor during his weeks on Iwo Jima. He finally left the
island after receiving shrapnel wounds to his legs. And even as his own
wounds bled into the volcanic ash of Iwo, he continued to minister to his
buddies.
"My breast didn't swell with pride," Bradley said in an
interview, "because I understand they were all doing things like that. No
one would have cooperated with me if I was out to show these guys were
unusual heroes. What they represent is the best of America, but they were
boys of common virtue."
That's what it says at the Iwo Jima
Memorial -- "Uncommon valor was a common virtue" -- and it became the
lifeblood of Bradley's book.
"What I came to understand about
heroism is this," Bradley says. "Try to get (the veterans) to talk about
themselves, and they dismiss it and say, 'I was doing my duty.' I thought
this was a modest statement until I realized these were good boys before
the war, they were good boys (on the island), and then after the island
they were good men in their community doing ordinary stuff, getting coffee
for someone, opening the door for someone, smiling.
"My dad just
did what he was trained to do; but under fire, when it's observed, it's
called heroism."
It took Bradley six months to get one veteran to
talk. The Iwo vet "cried into the telephone for 40 minutes and I could
hardly see my screen I was crying so hard. And then at the end he said,
'That's all I'm going to say,' and the phone went click.
"And
that's how it went. These guys don't talk."
Uncommon
valor
The flag-raising itself was a moment of history from
the start.
On Feb. 23, just four days into the battle to take Iwo
Jima from the Japanese, Marines climbed Mt. Suribachi, the island's
highest point. Using a 100-pound length of pipe that was part of the
Japanese army's rain drainage system, the American flag was hoisted into
place. It was the first American flag to fly on Japanese territory.
But Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal , down on the beach,
ordered the flag taken down for posterity. An underling then ordered a
bigger flag be placed at the top of Mt. Suribachi.
The second flag,
the one in the photo, was taken off a ship sunk by the Japanese at Pearl
Harbor. The replacement flag was carried up the cliffs by Gagnon. He and
the five other flag-raisers, and photographer Joe Rosenthal, had nothing
to do with the first flag.
When President Franklin Roosevelt
ordered the survivors brought home as heroes, they encountered a spotlight
they never expected, and hardly knew how to
handle.
Unwanted attention
Ira Hayes, a
Pima Indian from the Gila Bend Indian Reservation in Arizona, would be
tortured by alcoholism and more than 50 drunken and disorderly arrests. He
died of alcohol poisoning at 32, 10 years after the photo was taken. It's
James Bradley's opinion that Hayes suffered from severe post-traumatic
stress syndrome and never received the medical help he needed.
Rene
Gagnon died of a heart attack in 1979. He was 54. He had spent years
bemoaning that his fame never brought him wealth and a prestigious job. He
was a mill worker, airline clerk and finally, when he died, a
janitor.
The Bradley children grew up knowing their father was in
the photo but also not to talk about it. John told his son: "I want you to
always remember something. The heroes of Iwo Jima are the guys who didn't
come back."
The last survivor spent most of his life dogged for
interviews, autographs and photos. His family was under strict orders to
say he was off fishing in Canada.
In 1949, Republic Studios made a
movie called Sands of Iwo Jima starring John Wayne. At the
Marines' request, Bradley, Hayes and Gagnon made cameo appearances in the
film, one of Bradley's rare, if grudging, nods to history.
Would
the secretive John Bradley approve of this book and the new publicity it
will bring?
"I think he would absolutely love it," says Bradley,
"because it honors the guys. What my book does is focus the spotlight on
the Chick Robesons and Tex Stantons (even lesser-known veterans of Iwo
Jima).
"I'm doing everything I can to get reporters into the living
room of Tex Stanton, who hasn't had legs for 55 years."
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