Photojournalist who
captured the iconic image of soldiers
raising the Stars and Stripes on iwo Jima in 1945
Joe Rosenthal was the photographer who
took the most famously iconic picture in the history of US
military endeavour.
His photograph, exposed on February
23, 1945, shows the US flag being raised by five Marines and
one navy corpsman on Mount Suribachi on the strategic
Japanese island of Iwo Jima. One of the bloodiest battles in
American history was being fought, and Rosenthal, a
photographer with Associated Press, caught the moment as
much by tuck as by design.
The uncannily expressive perfection of
the photograph’s composition - the small team of soldiers
straining heroically to raise the Stars and Stripes amid the
shell-blasted wreckage of the Japanese hilltop redoubt - was
not lost on all those who saw it, and soon prompted
accusations that Rosenthal had staged the shot.
Initially, and unwittingly, he
encouraged this by saying that the soldiers had posed for
the photograph - however, he later realised that he had been
describing another photograph taken that day. And it later
emerged that what Rosenthal had photographed was in fact the
raising of a second US flag on Iwo Jima, to replace a
smaller flag which had been hoisted earlier.
Much of the discussion about the
authenticity of Rosenthal’s photograph came later, however.
At the time the image, with its devastating propaganda
potential, was seized upon by editors and was reprinted
countless times all round the world.
As soon as President Roosevelt saw it,
he summoned the flag-raisers home from Iwo Jima to sell war
bonds (three did not survive the battle). Rosenthal himself
was awarded a Pulitzer price for it in 1945.
Before long, Raising the Flag on
Iwo Jima, as the photograph came to be known, was used
to grace a 3-cent stamp, and it has been mass-produced in
poster form since. The image’s power as a propaganda tool
has been recognised many times over. The first President
Bush used it as a symbol in his campaign against flag
burning. It became a very big picture, especially for a
little man.
Joe Rosenthal stood at 5ft 5 in (he
had had to stand on a sandbag to take the picture) and was
so shortsighted that both the US Army and the Navy had
rejected him when he tried to enlist on the outbreak of war.
Considering the recognition his picture has had, it is
surprising that Rosenthal’s name has rarely been associated
with it. Indeed, it took 28 years and a decree by President
Reagan to have Rosenthal’s name added to Felix de Weldon’s
bronze representation of the scene he had immortalised. De
Weldon’s sculpture now stands in the Arlington National
Cemetery, Virginia, as a memorial to the US Marine Corps.
Joseph J. Rosenthal was born in
Washington in 1911. After graduating from high school in
1929, he moved to San Francisco to live with a brother.
There, contending like the rest of America with the effects
of the Depression, he eventually found himself a job as an
office boy with the Newspaper Enterprise Association.
In 1932 he became a reporter and
photographer for the San Francisco News, but soon
moved on to become chief photographer and manager in San
Francisco for The New York Times-Wide World Photos.
In 1941 the company was absorbed by Associated Press, and
Rosenthal joined its staff.
On the outbreak of the war he was
studying at the University of San Francisco, but in 1943,
after being rejected by the army and navy, he joined the US
Maritime Service and photographed convoys in the Atlantic
and off the coasts of Britain and North Africa.
A year later he was back with AP and
was assigned to the Pacific campaign. By the time he took
his most famous photograph he had already distinguished
himself photographing the fighting at Guam and Peleliu.
After the war Rosenthal settled back
into fife as a photojournalist, taking ajob with the San
Francisco Chronicle, where he stayed until his
retirement in 1981.
Rosenthal featured in a number of
books about his iconic photographs, and was frequently
interviewed - particularly after 9/11, when Thomas E.
Franklin’s photograph, Ground Zero Spirit, depicting
three firefighters raising the flag at the World Trade
Centre, New York, was seen to be an explicit homage to
Rosenthal’s image.
His marriage, in 1946, to Dorothy
Walch, was dissolved. He is survived by a son and a
daughter.
Joe Rosenthal, photographer, was born
on October 9, 1911. He died on August 20, 2006, aged 94.
Iwo Jima - This sbmp is printed in
green, arranged vertically, and the central design depicts
raising the United States flag by Unit States Marines on
Mount Suribachi on the island of Iwo Jima. The words,
“United States Postage”, appears across the top of the stamp
in white-face Gothic, and below this wording, at the right,
appears the denomination, “3c” in dark-face Gothic. Under
the central subject are the words, “Iwo Jima,” in white face
Gothic.
This stamp was first placed on sale at
the Washington, D.C., post office, on July 11, 1945. S.G.
930.
