‘Flag-raising on Iwo Jima’ (1945) and the Hollywood war film

Abstract

The iconic photograph ‘Flag-Raising on Iwo Jima’ shows five men raising the US flag on Mount Suribachi on the island of Iwo Jima, part-way through a battle between Japanese and US forces in World War II. The photograph was taken by Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal on 23 February 1945 and appeared on the front pages of US newspapers two days later. A painted interpretation of the photograph was used in the Seventh War Loan Bond Drive,which raised $26.3 billion for the war effort in just three months. The image appeared on 137 million commemorative stamps, or ‘Iwo Jima greens’, between 1945 and 1948, and provided the model for the Marine Corps Memorial in Washington DC, which was dedicated in November 1954. As with many iconic photographs there is also a parallel history of related film production. Marine cameraman Sergeant Bill Genaust shot 16mm colour film footage of the flag being raised, and his footage has appeared in newsreels and documentaries. The photograph and Genaust’s footage have also been reenacted in further film representations, including the Hollywood war films Sands of Iwo Jima (Allan Dwan, 1949), The Outsider (Delbert Mann, 1961) and Flags of Our Fathers (Clint Eastwood, 2006).