Luke Skywalker
Super Moderator
{vb:raw ozzmodz_postquote}:
xEmbed
xShare
Marines admit they misidentified one man in iconic 1945 Iwo Jima photo
In this Feb 23, 1945 file photo, U.S. Marines of the 28th Regiment, 5th Division, raise the American flag atop Mt. Suribachi, Iwo Jima, Japan.(Photo: Joe Rosenthal, AP)
WASHINGTON —<span style="color: Red;">*</span>The Marine Corps acknowledged<span style="color: Red;">*</span>Thursday it<span style="color: Red;">*</span>had<span style="color: Red;">*</span>misidentified one of the six men in the iconic<span style="color: Red;">*</span>1945 World War II<span style="color: Red;">*</span>photo of the flag-raising on Iwo Jima.
The investigation solved<span style="color: Red;">*</span>one mystery but raised another. The Marine Corps investigation identified a man who has never been officially linked to the famous photo: Pvt. 1st Class Harold Schultz, who died in 1995 and went through life without publicly talking about his role.
“Why doesn’t he say anything to anyone,” asked Charles Neimeyer, a Marine Corps historian who was on the panel that investigated the identities of the flag raisers. “That’s the mystery.”
“I think he took his secret to the grave,” Neimeyer said.
U.S. Marine Corps Pfc. Harold Schultz<span style="color: Red;">*</span>(Photo: Courtesy of The Smithsonian Channel)
The Marine Corps investigation concluded with near certainty that Schultz was one of the Marines raising the flag in the photo.
The investigation also determined that John Bradley, a Navy corpsman, was not in the photograph taken on Mount<span style="color: Red;">*</span>Suribachi<span style="color: Red;">*</span>by Joe Rosenthal, a photographer for the Associated Press.<span style="color: Red;">*</span>The Feb. 23, 1945, photo that has been reproduced over seven decades actually<span style="color: Red;">*</span>depicts the second flag-raising of the day.
The three surviving men identified in the photo, John Bradley, Ira Hayes and Rene Gagnon, went on a tour selling war bonds<span style="color: Red;">*</span>back in the United States and were hailed as heroes.
Bradley’s son James Bradley and co-author Ron Powers, wrote a best-selling book about the flag raisers, Flags of our Fathers, which was later made into a movie directed by Clint Eastwood. John Bradley had been in the first<span style="color: Red;">*</span>flag-raising photo on Iwo Jima and may have confused the two, Neimeyer said.
Schultz, who enlisted in the Marine Corps at age<span style="color: Red;">*</span>17, was seriously injured in fighting on the Japanese island and went on to a 30-year career with the U.S. Postal Service in Los Angeles after recovering from his wounds. He was engaged to a woman after the war, but she died of a brain tumor before they could wed, said<span style="color: Red;">*</span>his stepdaughter, Dezreen MacDowell. Schultz married MacDowell's mother at age 63.
Analysts believe Schultz, who received a Purple Heart,<span style="color: Red;">*</span>knew he was in the iconic image, but chose not to talk about it.
“I have a really hard time believing how it wouldn’t have been known to him,” said Matthew Morgan, a retired Marine officer who worked on a Smithsonian Channel documentary on the investigation. The filmmakers turned over their evidence<span style="color: Red;">*</span>to the Marine Corps to examine.
Schultz may<span style="color: Red;">*</span>have mentioned his role at least once. MacDowell<span style="color: Red;">*</span>now she recalls he said he was one of the flag raisers over dinner in the early 1990s when they were discussing<span style="color: Red;">*</span>the war in the Pacific.
“Harold, you are a hero,” she said<span style="color: Red;">*</span>she told him. “Not really. I was a Marine,” he said.
She described him as quiet and self-effacing.
It’s difficult to fathom his desire to keep his role quiet<span style="color: Red;">*</span>in<span style="color: Red;">*</span>an era when many Navy SEALs<span style="color: Red;">*</span>and other servicemen are<span style="color: Red;">*</span>rushing books into print about their exploits. During World War II<span style="color: Red;">*</span>many veterans were reluctant to speak about their experiences because it reminded them of the horrors of war.
One of the flag raisers,<span style="color: Red;">*</span>Ira Hayes, initially asked to remain anonymous, but the Marines were under orders from President Franklin Roosevelt to identify the Marines so they could go on a war bonds tour.
The photo appeared in thousands of newspapers and raised the morale<span style="color: Red;">*</span>of a nation that had grown weary of the bloody slog in the Pacific.
“We were winning the war but it was the hardest part of the war,” historian Eric Hammel said of the Pacific island-hopping campaign.
“It went viral in the 1945 equivalent of the word,” Neimeyer said.
The new investigation was prompted by growing doubts about the identity of Bradley in the photo.
Two amateur historians, Eric Krelle and Stephen Foley, went further and were able to identify Schultz as a possible flag raiser. They examined the Rosenthal photo and compared it to others taken the same day, including a video that was shot at the same time as Rosenthal took his photo. Their research was highlighted in a lengthy 2014 Omaha World-Herald article.
More than a year later the Marine Corps agreed to investigate the claim, appointing a nine-person panel headed by Jan Huly, a retired Marine Corps three-star general.
The faces in Rosenthal’s photos are mostly obscured, but investigators were able to identify distinctive ways the Marines<span style="color: Red;">*</span>wore their equipment and uniforms in the photo and then compared it to other photos taken of the unit<span style="color: Red;">*</span>on the same day.
“It’s obvious to the untrained eye,” said Michael Plaxton, a consultant who examined the photographs for a documentary, "The Unknown Flag Raiser of Iwo Jima,"<span style="color: Red;">*</span>which will air on the<span style="color: Red;">*</span>Smithsonian Channel on July 3.
“People have pointed out the inconsistencies over the years,” Plaxton said.
He said it required more<span style="color: Red;">*</span>careful and independent analysis to draw any firm conclusions, however. Plaxton’s report and other material uncovered by the Smithsonian Channel was used by the Marine Corps in their investigation.
Neimeyer said the Marine Corps didn’t immediately launch an investigation because it frequently receive<span style="color: Red;">*</span>competing claims about the presence of people in famous war photos. Once the Marine Corps<span style="color: Red;">*</span>realized how compelling the evidence was in this case, it<span style="color: Red;">*</span>agreed to look into the issue<span style="color: Red;">*</span>earlier this year.
It wasn’t the first time the Marines had to correct the record. A<span style="color: Red;">*</span>Marine Corps investigation in 1947 determined that Henry Hansen had been misidentified as a flag raiser instead of<span style="color: Red;">*</span>Harlon Block. Both men<span style="color: Red;">*</span>had been killed in action on the island, as were two other men identified in the photo, Franklin Sousley and Michael Strank.
It's not surprising there has been confusion about the identities of the Marines.<span style="color: Red;">*</span>Rosenthal gave the shot very little thought as he took it, and the men raising the flag<span style="color: Red;">*</span>took little notice as well.
The Marine Corps effort to identify the men was further<span style="color: Red;">*</span>hindered by the confusion over the fact there were two flag-raisings, the chaos of one of the war’s bloodiest battles and the faces in the photos were obscured.
The Marine Corps said the results of the investigation don’t undermine what the photo and memorial depicting it represent. The photo helped cement the Marines’ reputation as one of the world’s toughest fighting forces.
"Although the Rosenthal image is iconic and significant, to Marines it's not about the individuals and never has been," Gen. Robert Neller, commandant of the Marine Corps, said in a statement.<span style="color: Red;">*</span>"Simply stated, our fighting spirit is captured in that frame, and it remains a symbol of the tremendous accomplishments of our Corps -- what they did together and what they represent remains most important.
"That doesn't change," Neller said.
Marines landed on Iwo Jima, a tiny Pacific atoll about 760 miles from mainland Japan, on Feb. 19, 1945, beginning<span style="color: Red;">*</span>a bloody five-week<span style="color: Red;">*</span>fight<span style="color: Red;">*</span>for every inch of the island against an entrenched Japanese force that refused to surrender.
Few Marines escaped unscathed. Of<span style="color: Red;">*</span>the 70,000 Americans who participated in the battle, 6,800 were killed and about 20,000 were wounded. Some infantry units sustained much higher casualty rates. About 20,000 Japanese soldiers, most of the force, died trying to defend the tiny island.
The first flag-raising, which occurred shortly after 10 a.m., captured the attention of the Marines fighting on the island. In the midst of brutal battles throughout the island<span style="color: Red;">*</span>they looked up to see the<span style="color: Red;">*</span>flag flying over Mount<span style="color: Red;">*</span>Suribachi, the highest point on the island. Marines paused to cheer. Navy ships sounded their horns.
Hours later the Marines decided to replace that flag with a larger one. Rosenthal was there, snapping a photo so quickly he didn’t have time to look through his viewfinder.
After Schultz's death,<span style="color: Red;">*</span>MacDowell<span style="color: Red;">*</span>found only a few items that her stepfather<span style="color: Red;">*</span>kept from his Marine Corps days.<span style="color: Red;">*</span>Included in the metal box of military records<span style="color: Red;">*</span>was a group photo<span style="color: Red;">*</span>that Rosenthal took of Marines on Iwo Jima<span style="color: Red;">*</span>around the same time as the famous photo.
But there was no answer to the mystery of why Schultz<span style="color: Red;">*</span>remained largely silent about his brush with history.
“He probably wouldn’t be really happy with us revealing this now,” Neimeyer said.
Powered By WizardRSS.com | Full Text RSS Feed