Raising the flag at Iwo Jima (XX0032)

Raising the Flag at Iwo Jima, 23 February 1945

Five Marines and a Navy corpsman raised a flag on the summit of Mount Suribachi on the fifth day of a battle that would last another month. Joe Rosenthal’s photograph of the second, larger flag became the most reproduced image of the Pacific war and the model for the Marine Corps War Memorial. The men in it were not posing: the first flag had been judged too small to be seen from the beaches, and they were replacing it.

The Island

Iwo Jima is eight square miles of volcanic rock 1,200 kilometres from Tokyo, wanted as an emergency landing field for B-29 crews returning from raids on Japan. General Kuribayashi Tadamichi abandoned the standard doctrine of contesting the beaches and instead built a defence in depth: some 18 kilometres of tunnels, bunkers and gun positions cut into the rock, designed to be fought from underground and to make every metre expensive.

Thirty-Six Days

The landings began on 19 February. The volcanic ash gave no purchase to vehicles or entrenching tools, and the defenders held fire until the beaches were crowded. Of roughly 21,000 Japanese defenders, about 216 were taken prisoner during the battle. American casualties were around 26,000, of whom nearly 7,000 died — the only engagement in the Pacific where American losses exceeded Japanese ones. Kuribayashi’s stated aim was not to hold the island but to make its cost unbearable, and by that measure the defence succeeded.

The Photograph and the Men

Three of the six men in the picture were killed on Iwo Jima within days. The identification of the figures was corrected twice by the Marine Corps, in 2016 and 2019, more than seventy years after the event — an indication of how confused the moment actually was, against how fixed the image became.

Giuseppe Rava’s Original Work

Giuseppe Rava reconstructs the scene from the documentary record: the herringbone twill utilities, the M1 helmet with its camouflage cover, the entrenching tools and the length of Japanese water pipe used as a flagstaff, against the volcanic ground of Suribachi.

This is a limited edition fine art print, hand-signed by the artist, produced in SRA3 format on fine art paper. Ships worldwide.