Sailor’s identity in Iwo Jima photo in doubt
Marine Corps opens inquiry into identities of six flag-raisers
James Bradley, who wrote “Flags of Our Fathers,” says he believes his father was involved in the first raising of the flag but not in the more famous second one.
WASHINGTON — James Bradley, the author of “Flags of Our Fathers,” a best-selling book about the role of his f ather, a Navy corpsman, in the raising of the U.S. flag over Iwo Jima, said in an interview Tuesday that he no longer believed his father was shown in an iconic photograph of the moment.
Bradley described his doubts about his father’s role after the Marine Corps revealed last week that it had opened an inquiry into whether some of the six men long thought to be in the image had been misidentified. He said that his father, John Bradley, had participated in raising a flag on Iwo Jima on Feb. 23, 1945, but had not participated in a second flag-raising the same day, which became the famous photograph.
Doubts arise
His father, he said, probably thought the first flag-raising was the one that was captured in the photograph.
All of the men identified in the photograph are dead. Three of the men died fighting the Japanese on Iwo Jima. John Bradley died in 1994.
The photo was taken by Joe Rosenthal, an Associated Press photographer, on Feb. 23, 1945. It was splashed across the front pages of newspapers throughout the country, and was an immediate source of patriotism and controversy. President Harry S. Truman used it to sell bonds to fund the war, Rosenthal brushed back accusations that it was staged, and questions arose — and were apparently answered — about who was really in it.
The photograph was also the inspiration for the Marine Corps War Memorial in Arlington, Va., a statue in which six 32-foot-tall figures are depicted in the positions captured by Rosenthal.
Bradley said he had become convinced that his father was not in the photograph after studying evidence that was published in a 2014 story in the Omaha WorldHerald. He said he had waited a year to examine the evidence in the newspaper article because he was working on a new book in Vietnam, and then became ill. He did not come forward with his belief that his father was not in the photograph, he said, because there was little interest from the news media and the Marines.
“It wasn’t top of mind,” Bradley said in a telephone interview. “It wasn’t a priority. I was overseas, and this past fall, I was recovering from a disease I got in New Guinea that almost killed me. Now there’s interest in this and I’m talking about it. I didn’t have the energy to carry the water all by myself.”
On the book jacket
“Flags of Our Fathers,” first published in 2000, was on bestseller lists for nearly a year. It was later made into a movie directed by Clint Eastwood.
“Here is the true story behind the six flag raisers and the immortal photograph that came to symbolize the power and courage of America during World War II,” reads a summary on the back of a paperback edition of the book. “In ‘Flags of Our Fathers,’ the son of one of the flag raisers captures the glory, the heartbreak, and the legacy of the six ordinary boys who came together at a crucial moment in one of history’s bloodiest battles — and lifted the heart and spirit of a nation at war.”
The Marine Corps acknowledged in a written statement that “a private organization” had approached it with new information about the photograph and that it was investigating the matter, but it would not comment on what that information was.
Marine officials said the inquiry was being led by the corps’ chief historian, and the commandant of Marines is expected to be briefed on the results of the investigation in the coming weeks.