REMEMBER WHEN

Monday, April 13, 2009 GOLD COAST BULLETIN

SO this was what 27,909 US casualties, including 6825 killed, had come to represent – a crass advertising campaign by the bumblers at Tourism Australia.

The national tourism body has hit a new low by recreating a famous photograph taken during the bloody World War II Battle of Iwo Jima.

Instead of American soldiers raising the Stars and Stripes atop Mount Suribachi on the Pacific island, Tourism Australia had a family erecting a beach umbrella on the sand.

The advertisement in the April 11-12 edition of The Weekend Australian Magazine and also online at www.australia.com urged people to win the Work/ Life Battle.

In doing so it disrespected the sacrifice of thousands of US soldiers who helped protect Australia, defeat the Japanese and bring a swifter end to the war.

The irony was, the US is one of the prime markets Tourism Australia was trying to lure Down Under.

So was Japan, which suffered 20,000 dead at Iwo Jima.

The original photograph, taken by Joe Rosenthal, is particularly poignant because three of the men did not survive the battle.

The picture was later used by Felix de Weldon to sculpt the US Marine Corps War Memorial near Arlington National Cemetery, just outside Washington DC.

Former RSL Gold Coast District president Glen Mylne said recreating the photograph for an advertising campaign was extremely disrespectful.

“It’s in bad taste, extraordinarily bad taste,” he said. “It’s insulting to the dead, people who gave their lives so that others may live.”