Behind the Lens: The Untold Stories of Iconic Photographs

The man who took the most famous photograph of World War Two, Joe Rosenthal, almost missed the shot entirely. He was busy piling up sandbags and rocks to stand on for a better angle. Wait, really? For THAT photo? He was… building a little podium? He was. And it's a perfect example of what we talked about with Dorothea Lange's 'Migrant Mother'—the photographer is often the last person to know they’ve captured history. The camera just sees what’s in front of it. The meaning comes later. So what exactly was in front of it? I think we all just assume we know the story. It’s the symbol of victory on Iwo Jima. Right, but the reality on Mount Suribachi that day—February 23rd, 1945—was just chaos.

A group of Marines had already fought their way to the summit hours earlier and raised a small American flag. A very small one. Hold on. So Rosenthal’s photo… it’s not the first flag? Not at all. It’s the replacement. The first flag was too small to be seen from down below. So a second, much larger flag was sent up. As six guys started to hoist this new one, Rosenthal, who'd been distracted, just turned, raised his camera, and fired. He didn’t even use the viewfinder. One shot. That’s incredible. It’s pure luck. It's always a bit of luck. The photo was on newspaper front pages less than two days later. It won the Pulitzer Prize that same year.

But here’s the part that gets lost. Three of the six men in that photograph never saw the acclaim. They were killed in action on Iwo Jima before the battle was even over. Oh, wow. I had no idea. Who… who were they? Five Marines and a Navy corpsman. Harlon Block, Franklin Sousley, and Rene Gagnon were three of them. Block and Sousley died on Iwo Jima. The others were Ira Hayes, Harold Keller, and a man we thought for seventy years was John Bradley. What do you mean, a man we thought was John Bradley? This is where the story gets complicated. For decades, the world believed Navy Pharmacist’s Mate John Bradley was the figure in the middle.

His son even wrote a best-selling book, Flags of Our Fathers. But amateur historians started noticing discrepancies. Discrepancies in the photo? After all this time? Yeah, things like the way the uniform bloused, the gear he was carrying. It didn't quite match. So in 2016, the Marine Corps did a full review. They looked at film footage shot by another combat photographer, a Sergeant named Bill Genaust—who was also killed on Iwo Jima, by the way. My god. And they concluded… it wasn’t John Bradley. It was another Marine, Harold Schultz. He’d apparently known the whole time and just… never said anything. Lived a quiet life and died without the world knowing he was in that picture.

So the most famous war photograph in American history had the wrong guy identified for seventy years? How does that happen? Fog of war, you know? And then the story becomes bigger than the men in it. The image was immediately used for a war bond drive that raised twenty-six BILLION dollars. It became the blueprint for the Marine Corps War Memorial. The symbol became more important than the facts. So the controversy wasn't that it was staged, which was the old rumor. The real controversy was that we just got the names wrong. Exactly. And to the Marine Corps' credit, the Commandant at the time, General Robert Neller, said, “Our history is important to us, and we have a responsibility to ensure it’s right.” I respect that.

But he also said something else that I think is the real heart of it. He said in his mind, all the Marines who fought to get a flag up on that mountain could be considered 'flag raisers.' Mm-hm. The act was bigger than any one person. Right. Rosenthal himself always downplayed his role. He'd say, "The Marines took Iwo Jima, I just took the picture." And he was right. The photo isn't about the six men, or even about Joe Rosenthal. It’s about the 70,000 who fought there, and the thousands who never came home. The picture just gave that sacrifice a face. A shape. Even if it took us a lifetime to learn all their names.