February 23, 1945. Twelve hours into the worst bloodbath of the Pacific. A small patrol of Marines fought to the top of an extinct volcano on a tiny island most Americans had never heard of, and ran a flag up a length of Japanese water pipe. A few hours later, a second, larger flag went up in its place. A photographer named Joe Rosenthal happened to be there. The photo he took on Mount Suribachi has done more for American morale than any image in our history.
What the Iwo Jima Flag Raising Actually Was
The Iwo Jima flag raising is the moment six United States servicemen lifted a 96-by-56-inch American flag on Mount Suribachi, the 554-foot volcano on the southern tip of Iwo Jima, on the afternoon of February 23, 1945. Joe Rosenthal of the Associated Press caught the second of two flag raisings on a single press camera frame. The shutter clicked while the flag was still on its way up. He almost missed the shot.
The image was wired stateside, ran on the front page of nearly every Sunday paper in America, and was on every newsreel before the men in the photo were even off the island. It won the 1945 Pulitzer Prize for Photography in record time, and it became the model for the Marine Corps War Memorial in Arlington. Three of the six men in the picture never made it home.
★ Iwo Jima Flag Raising at a Glance
| Date | February 23, 1945 |
| Location | Mount Suribachi, Iwo Jima, Volcano Islands |
| Photographer | Joe Rosenthal, Associated Press |
| Number of raisings | Two (the photo is the second) |
| Marines in the photo | Five Marines and one Navy corpsman |
| Battle of Iwo Jima | Feb 19 to Mar 26, 1945 (36 days) |
| Total American casualties | ~26,000, including 6,800 killed |
Why Iwo Jima Mattered Enough to Take
Iwo Jima sits about 750 miles south of Tokyo. By early 1945, B-29 bombers were flying long-range missions from Saipan, Tinian, and Guam against the Japanese mainland and getting shot up the entire way home. Iwo Jima had two airfields and was being built into a third. The island gave Japan a radar warning station for incoming raids and a fighter base from which to harass the bombers.
If American forces could take it, the math flipped. The B-29s would get a place to belly-land when their engines were torn up. P-51 Mustangs could fly escort from a closer airbase. The radar warning station went silent. The Japanese command knew this. Lieutenant General Tadamichi Kuribayashi turned the eight square miles of black volcanic rock into one of the most prepared defenses of the war: more than 11 miles of tunnels, 1,500 underground rooms, hidden artillery, no plan to surrender.
D-Day was February 19, 1945. Three Marine divisions, the 3rd, 4th, and 5th, hit the black-sand beaches under the heaviest concentrated artillery fire any American troops had ever taken. The men sank to their ankles in volcanic ash. Tanks bogged down. The defenders did not fire on the first wave. They waited until the beach was packed with Marines, vehicles, and supplies, then opened up from caves and pillboxes that had survived 72 days of pre-invasion bombing. The first day cost 2,420 Americans.
The Climb to the Summit
Mount Suribachi was the southern anchor of the Japanese defense. From the top, gunners could see the entire landing beach. Taking it was the priority. By February 21, the volcano was cut off from the rest of the Japanese force on the north end of the island. By the morning of February 23, the slope had been bombed, shelled, flame-thrown, and grenaded for four days.
Lieutenant Colonel Chandler Johnson, the 2nd Battalion, 28th Marines commanding officer, sent a 40-man patrol up the volcano around 8:00 a.m. He handed Lieutenant Harold Schrier a small folded American flag and told him: "If you get to the top, put it up." The patrol expected to be ambushed every step of the way. They were not. They reached the summit around 10:20 a.m. and found a Japanese water pipe, lashed the flag to it, and raised it.
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10:20 Approximate time on February 23, 1945, when the first American flag went up on Mount Suribachi. Battleships and Marines below cheered, blew horns, and fired weapons into the air. |
The first flag was small, about 28 by 54 inches. From the beach, you could barely see it. A Marine photographer named Sergeant Louis Lowery took a photo of that first raising and almost lost his life seconds later when two Japanese soldiers attacked the patrol. Word came back down the volcano that a bigger flag was needed, both for visibility and as a souvenir before someone in the higher chain of command kept the first one. Around noon, a second patrol carried up a 96-by-56-inch flag pulled from a Navy LST landing ship.
The Second Flag Raising and the Photo
The second flag was bigger, the pole was heavier, and six men did the work. Joe Rosenthal had hiked up the volcano with two Marine photographers. He almost missed the moment. He was looking down to stack rocks for a better camera angle when one of the Marines shouted that the flag was going up. He swung his Speed Graphic camera up, framed it without looking through the viewfinder, and pressed the shutter.
He had no idea if he had even gotten the picture. He shot a posed photo right after, with Marines waving and cheering under the now-raised flag, and assumed that one would be the famous one. The film flew to Guam to be developed. When the AP editor saw the action shot, he wired one word: "perfect." The image hit U.S. papers two days later. The Treasury Department would later use it to sell $26.3 billion in war bonds for the 7th War Loan drive, the most successful bond drive of the war.
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The Six Men in the Photo
For decades the names of the six flag raisers were a matter of dispute and bad record-keeping. The Marine Corps officially settled the roster in 1947, then revised the identification of two men in 2016 and a third in 2019 after deep photo analysis by historians. The current confirmed list is below.
| 1 | Sergeant Michael Strank, USMC. Czechoslovak-born, 25, the senior Marine in the photo. Killed in action March 1, 1945, six days after the raising, by a U.S. shell that fell short. He was the man his Marines trusted most. |
| 2 | Corporal Harlon Block, USMC. 21, from Weslaco, Texas. Killed in action the same day as Strank, March 1, by a Japanese mortar. He had been misidentified as Sergeant Hank Hansen for nearly two years. His mother said from the start, "I know my boy's hands." |
| 3 | Private First Class Franklin Sousley, USMC. 19, a tobacco-farm kid from Hilltop, Kentucky. Killed in action March 21, 1945, near the end of the battle, three days before the island was officially secured. The youngest of the six. |
| 4 | Corporal Ira Hayes, USMC. 22, a Pima from the Gila River Indian Community in Arizona. Survived the war and was sent home for the bond tour. He hated the attention, drank heavily after the war, and died of exposure in 1955 at age 32. His grave is at Arlington. |
| 5 | Private First Class Harold Schultz, USMC. 19, from Detroit. Survived. Identified by the Marine Corps in 2016, more than 70 years after the photo, replacing John Bradley in the official record. Schultz never told even his family he was in the photo. He died in 1995. |
| 6 | Corporal Harold "Pie" Keller, USMC. 23, from Brooklyn, Iowa. Survived. Identified by the Marine Corps in 2019, replacing Rene Gagnon in the photo lineup. Like Schultz, Keller never spoke publicly about the moment. He died in 1979. |
For decades, John Bradley, the Navy corpsman, was thought to be in the photo. Bradley had helped raise the first flag earlier that morning, and his son James Bradley wrote the bestseller "Flags of Our Fathers" about him in 2000. Photo analysis later confirmed Bradley was not in the famous second-raising image. He earned a Navy Cross for valor on Iwo Jima all the same. He went home, opened a funeral parlor in Antigo, Wisconsin, and almost never spoke of the war for the rest of his life.
The Real Cost of Iwo Jima
The flag went up on day five. The battle had 31 days left to run. American forces would not officially declare Iwo Jima secured until March 26, 1945. The numbers from those 36 days are still hard to read.
Admiral Chester Nimitz wrote his famous tribute about the Marines on Iwo Jima a few days into the fighting. The line carved on the memorial reads: "Uncommon valor was a common virtue." It is one of the few times in American military history that a single sentence does the men justice.
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The Memorial, the Bond Drive, and the Aftermath
Three of the men in the photo never came home. The three who did, Hayes, Schultz, and Keller, never wanted to talk about it. The country wanted them to. By the time the photo had been on the cover of every paper, the Treasury Department pulled Hayes, Bradley (who was thought at the time to be in the photo), and Rene Gagnon (who carried the second flag up but was not in the famous frame) off Iwo Jima for a bond tour.
They went city to city, climbing on a giant papier-mâché replica of the photo, shaking hands, signing autographs. Hayes hated it. He was a combat Marine pulled away from his unit while his friends were still dying on a black-sand island. He asked the Marine Corps to send him back. They eventually did. He saw the rest of the war.
The 7th War Loan drive raised $26.3 billion. That is over $400 billion in 2026 dollars. Without it, the war effort runs out of money in months. The photo did that. Six men, an extinct volcano, and a piece of bedsheet-sized sailcloth held up to the wind.
The Marine Corps War Memorial at Arlington Ridge in Virginia, dedicated November 10, 1954, is sculptor Felix de Weldon's bronze recreation of the Rosenthal photograph. It stands 32 feet tall, the figures themselves are roughly 32 feet, and the 60-foot bronze flagpole flies a real American flag 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, by Presidential proclamation. The base lists every Marine engagement since 1775. It is the only Marine monument honoring all Marines.
Five Things People Get Wrong About the Photo
MYTH 01
"It was staged."
It was not staged in the sense the word usually means. It was the second of two real raisings, both ordered by the same battalion commander. Joe Rosenthal did pose a separate photograph after the action shot, but the famous image is a single unrehearsed press frame caught in the middle of the actual flag going up.
MYTH 02
"The flag raising ended the battle."
The flag went up on day five of a 36-day battle. The bloodiest fighting was still ahead. Americans were still being killed on Iwo Jima a full month after the photograph ran in newspapers back home. Three of the six raisers were dead within four weeks of the picture being taken.
MYTH 03
"All six men were Marines."
All six men in the second raising are now confirmed Marines: Strank, Block, Sousley, Hayes, Schultz, and Keller. The earlier roster included Navy Corpsman John Bradley, who participated in the first flag raising that morning but is no longer believed to have been in the famous photograph based on photographic and uniform analysis.
MYTH 04
"The Marines who survived came home as heroes and lived happily ever after."
Ira Hayes died of exposure on a reservation in Arizona at 32, scarred by what he had seen and what was asked of him afterward. Harold Schultz never told his family he was in the photo. Harold Keller almost never discussed it. The photo made the country feel like a winner. The men in it carried what they saw alone, in private.
MYTH 05
"The first flag was the famous one."
No. The first flag, raised around 10:20 a.m., was small and was photographed by Sergeant Louis Lowery in a separate image. The famous Rosenthal photograph is the larger, second flag, raised around noon to be more visible from the beach and to keep the first flag as a battalion trophy.
None of this takes anything away from the photo. If anything, it puts the moment back into the war it came out of. A small patrol of exhausted men climbed an active battlefield, raised one flag, then a bigger one, and three of the men in the famous frame did not survive long enough to see the war end. That is the picture.
How to Honor the Iwo Jima Flag Raising Today
Memorial Day 2026 is May 25. The Marine Corps birthday is November 10. The anniversary of the flag raising is February 23. Any of these days, the men of Iwo Jima deserve more than a passing thought.
| 1 | Visit the Marine Corps War Memorial. Arlington Ridge, Virginia. The flag flies 24 hours a day. Sunset Parade ceremonies run summer Tuesdays at 7:00 p.m. with the Marine Drum and Bugle Corps and the Silent Drill Platoon. Free, no tickets required. |
| 2 | Learn the names of all six men. Strank, Block, Sousley, Hayes, Schultz, Keller. If you know your kids' favorite YouTubers, you can know these six. |
| 3 | Read or watch the story properly. "Flags of Our Fathers" by James Bradley is the foundation. Clint Eastwood's 2006 film of the same name pairs with "Letters from Iwo Jima" for both sides of the battle. Hampton Sides' "Ghost Soldiers" gives broader Pacific context. |
| 4 | Fly your flag right. On Memorial Day, the flag flies at half-staff from sunrise until noon, then is raised to full staff for the rest of the day. On the Marine Corps birthday and the anniversary of the flag raising, full staff all day. Make sure it is properly lit if you fly after dark. |
| 5 | Donate to a Marine veteran cause. Marine Corps League, Semper Fi & America's Fund, Wounded Warrior Project. Pick one and put a recurring donation on it. The men in that photo bought you a country. The least you can do is buy a Marine a meal. |
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Frequently Asked Questions
When was the Iwo Jima flag raising?
February 23, 1945, on the summit of Mount Suribachi. The first, smaller flag went up around 10:20 a.m. The larger, famous flag (the one in the Joe Rosenthal photograph) went up around noon.
Who are the six men in the Iwo Jima flag raising photo?
All six are Marines: Sergeant Michael Strank, Corporal Harlon Block, Private First Class Franklin Sousley, Corporal Ira Hayes, Private First Class Harold Schultz, and Corporal Harold Keller. Schultz was confirmed in 2016 (replacing John Bradley), and Keller was confirmed in 2019 (replacing Rene Gagnon).
Was the Iwo Jima flag raising staged?
No. The Rosenthal photograph captured the second of two real flag raisings. The first flag was raised earlier that morning. A larger flag was sent up so it could be seen from the beach and so the first flag could be kept as a unit trophy. Rosenthal did take a separate posed photo afterward, but the famous image is a real, unrehearsed action shot.
How many of the flag raisers died on Iwo Jima?
Three of the six. Sergeant Michael Strank and Corporal Harlon Block were killed in action on March 1, 1945. Private First Class Franklin Sousley was killed on March 21, 1945. Hayes, Schultz, and Keller survived the battle.
Where is the actual Iwo Jima flag now?
Both flags from February 23, 1945 are preserved at the Marine Corps National Museum in Triangle, Virginia. The first, smaller flag and the second, larger Rosenthal-photo flag are both on permanent display. Admission is free.
Where is the Marine Corps War Memorial?
Arlington Ridge Park in Arlington, Virginia, just north of Arlington National Cemetery. The bronze sculpture, dedicated November 10, 1954, was created by Felix de Weldon and is a direct recreation of the Rosenthal photograph. A real American flag flies from the memorial 24 hours a day by Presidential proclamation.
Who took the Iwo Jima photo?
Joe Rosenthal of the Associated Press, using a 4x5 Speed Graphic press camera. Rosenthal was 33 years old at the time. He won the 1945 Pulitzer Prize for Photography for the image, set in record time after the photo's publication. He had been rejected for military service due to poor eyesight.
Why do Marines salute the Iwo Jima flag raising photo?
Because three of the six men in the photo were dead within four weeks of it being taken, and because the image stands for the entire 36-day battle that cost roughly 6,800 American lives. For the Marine Corps, it is shorthand for "uncommon valor was a common virtue," the line Admiral Chester Nimitz wrote about Iwo Jima.
If you want to go deeper, the 13 folds of the American flag ceremony was created in part to honor men like the six on Suribachi. The history of Taps covers the bugle call played at every Marine funeral. And our Memorial Day 2026 guide walks through the half-staff rule, ceremonies, and what to do on May 25.
If you have a WWII, Korean War, or Vietnam vet in your life who has not yet seen the memorials in DC, learn about Honor Flight, the nonprofit that flies veterans to Washington for free, and consider helping them make the trip while there is still time.
If you want the Pacific war turning point that made Iwo Jima possible, our piece on the Battle of Midway covers the four days in June 1942 when the U.S. Navy stopped Japan cold.
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Honor Them the Right Way Six men. One flag. A country still standing because of what they did. Show up for them this Memorial Day. |
