Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima

Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima (Japanese: 硫黄島の星条旗, Hepburn: Iōtō no Seijōki) is an iconic photograph of six United States Marines raising the U.S. flag atop Mount Suribachi during the Battle of Iwo Jima in the final stages of the Pacific War. Taken by Joe Rosenthal of the Associated Press on February 22, 1945, the photograph was published in Sunday newspapers two days later and reprinted in thousands of publications. It won the 1945 Pulitzer Prize for Photography and has come to be regarded in the United States as one of the most recognizable images of World War II.

The flag raising occurred in the early afternoon, after the mountaintop was captured and a smaller flag was raised on top that morning. Three of the six Marines in the photograph—Sergeant Michael Strank, Corporal Harlon Block, and Private First Class Franklin Sousley—would be killed in action during the battle; Block was identified as Sergeant Hank Hansen until January 1947 and Sousley was identified as PhM2c. John Bradley, USN, until June 2016.^[1] The other three Marines in the photograph were Corporals (then Privates First Class) Ira Hayes, Harold Schultz, and Harold Keller; Schultz was identified as Sousley until June 2016^[1] and Keller was identified as Rene Gagnon until October 2019.^[2] All of the men served in the 5th Marine Division on Iwo Jima.

The photograph was the model for the Marine Corps War Memorial, dedicated in 1954 to honor all U.S. Marines who died in service since 1775. The memorial, sculpted by Felix de Weldon, is located in Arlington Ridge Park,^[3] near the Ord-Weitzel Gate to Arlington National Cemetery and the Netherlands Carillon.