Joe Rosenthal/AP

U.S. Marines of the 28th Regiment, 5th Marine Division raise the American flag atop Mount Suribachi, Iwo Jima, on Feb. 23, 1945.

Editor's Note

Seventy years ago, five Marines and a Navy corpsman climbed to the top of Mount Suribachi to plant the U.S. flag in the beginning days of the Battle of Iwo Jima.

Stars and Stripes is commemorating the iconic moment in this special interactive section.

Survivors recount battle

by Martin Kuz

Silence surrounded the first wave of Marines to wade ashore on Iwo Jima on Feb. 19, 1945. For the previous eight months, as World War II intensified in the Pacific, American forces had bombed the volcanic island that lies 750 miles from mainland Japan. U.S. military leaders believed the assault from sea and sky would assure their ground troops of a swift victory.

- Continued on page 2

Hershel Williams, MOH

Interviewed by Joe Gromelski

During the battle for Iwo Jima, more than 6,800 U.S. troops were killed and another 19,000 were injured. The bloodiest battle in the Pacific Theater during World War II, tens of thousands of Marines stormed the island, which was seen as pivotal to the success of defeating the Japanese military.

In the end, 22 Marines were awarded the Medal of Honor for their actions during the monthlong battle.

Only one, Cpl. Hershel Williams, is alive today.

- Continued on page 4

Photographer almost missed historic moment

by Michael S. Darnell

It took only 1/400th of a second for history to change.

Associated Press war correspondent Joe Rosenthal’s famous photograph of Marines raising the flag on Iwo Jima came to symbolize not only the battle but American perseverance during World War II.

The image endures as the very symbol of the Marine Corps.

- Continued on page 5

Flag raising photo secured Marine Corps’ future forever

by Martin Kuz

Stars and Stripes Staff Writer

In retrospect, the quote seems almost too cinematic, as if a Hollywood screenwriter handed a one-sentence script to James Forrestal for the moment he reached Iwo Jima.

The secretary of the Navy landed by ship on the Japanese island on Feb. 23, 1945. Four days earlier, 30,000 U.S. troops, most of them Marines, had invaded the heavily defended speck of volcanic rock 750 miles from mainland Japan.

Another 40,000 came ashore over the following month in a battle remembered as one of the bloodiest of World War II in the Pacific theater.

At Iwo Jima’s southern tip stands its tallest point, Mount Suribachi, peaking at 554 feet. The morning of the secretary’s arrival, amid fierce fighting across the island, a Marine platoon climbed to the summit.

As a handful of its members lifted a 20-foot-long water pipe topped with a small American flag, Forrestal, watching from the beach below with Gen. Holland Smith, spoke the line that enshrined him in military mythology.

“Holland, the raising of that flag on Suribachi means a Marine Corps for the next 500 years.”

- Continued on page 3

View gallery

IWO JIMA

VICTORY AT

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Where are the flags now?

Ken-Yon Hardy/Stars and Stripes

Courtesy U.S. Marine Corps

The grim-faced Marine stands guard as these 5th Marine Division, 28th Regiment troops hoist to the top of an improvised flagpole, the flag they carried to the summit of Mount Suribachi.

Courtesy of U.S. Marine Corps

Marines by the newly erected flag. (Photo courtesy U.S. Marine Corps)

Courtesy of U.S. Marine Corps

Installing large flag on Mt. Suribachi. (Photo courtesy U.S. Marine Corps)

Courtesy of Library of Congress

Soon after Iwo, the surviving flag raisers were sent on a war bond drive. This poster was used during the drive.

James T. Dockery/U.S. Marines

Two Marines assess the area while standing next to the raised flag on Mount Suribachi, 1945. LSTs - tank landing ships, lined up along the assault beaches to the right, the rest of Iwo Jima stretches out in the distance to the left.

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The battle that was

Battle plan

Vol. 1 - No. 1945

History revisited

A look at the flags

Mon., Feb. 23, 2015

The flag raising

Medal of Honor

36 days of hell

In their own words

Daily Newspaper of U.S. Armed Forces

in the Global Theater of Operations