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Features:- Print Title: Flag Raising on Iwo Jima, February 23, 1945
- Artist: Joe Rosenthal
- Size: 32 x 24 inches
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The most reproduced photograph in American history:
The assault on Iwo Jima began with the naval bombardment on February 19, 1945 followed by the clash of 100,000 men on an island one-third the size of Manhattan. Four days later the Marines of Easy Company were ordered to raise the American flag on the top of Mount Surabachi on February 23. The 550-foot volcanic cone at the island's southern tip was Iwo Jima's highest point. A first, smaller American flag was raised when the decision was made to raise a second, larger flag and as it went up Joe Rosenthal snapped the photograph. As the editors of "US Camera Magazine" later declared: "In that moment, Rosenthal's camera recorded the soul of a nation." The version of Rosenthal's photograph of the flag raising on Iwo Jima is almost always cropped so that the image is presented as a vertical photograph, focusing on the flag and the six figures while omitting the terrain. However, with this art poster you get the complete original photograph, which was a horizontal shot. Having the cropped version engrained in the national consciousness, there is something compelling about seeing the entire image, which measures 26.5 x 19 inches on the 32 x 24 inch poster. There is a caption below the photograph: "Flag Raising on Iwo Jima, February 23, 1945." The photograph is available with or without matting, as well as with a black wood or black metal frame. There are six Easy Company Marines raising the flag, four in the front line (Ira Hayes, Franklin Sousley, John Bradley and Harlon Block), and two in the back (Michael Strank, behind Sousley with the one hand not seen on the pole, and Rene Gagnon, behind Bradley). Strank, Block and Sousley would all die shortly after the famous photograph was taken. Sgt. Strank was killed by a mortar round on March 1. Block his place and was killed by another mortar attack that same day. Soulsey was killed on March 21. The other three went on to become national heroes when President Franklin Roosevelt, amazed by how many times newspapers around the country were reprinting the AP photograph, made it the theme for the Seventh War Bond Tour and ordered the War Department to "Transfer immediately by air to Washington, D.C. the 6 men who appear in the Rosenthal photograph of flag raising at Mt. Suribachi." During the two months of the Seventh Bond Tour the photograph was seen on 5,000 billboards as well as on posters in 15,000 banks, 16,000 movie theaters, 30,000 railroad stations, 200,000 factories and over a million retail stores. The tour began in Times Square in May 1945 with Hayes, Gagnon and Bradley raising the flag over a 55-foot high replica of the photograph. The tour raised $24 billion, more than another other Bond effort. The survivors also reenacted the flag raising for the John Wayne World War II film "Iwo Jima." The image was so popular that for the first time in history living persons appeared on the face of a U.S. stamp. Issued just five months after the flag raising, the 3 cent stamp was one of the most popular in history, with 137 million sold. The first call for a national monument depicting the scene came two days after the photograph was taken and sculptor Felix DeWeldon's gigantic statue was dedicated on November 10. 1954 with President Eisenhower and the three survivors in attendance. However, 10 weeks later Hayes would be found frozen to death, dying of exposure and alcohol, almost 10 years to the day after he helped raise the flag on Iwo Jima. A movie about Hayes life, "The Outsider," was produced with Tony Curtis playing the Pima Indian who had been horrified by being treated as a hero when his buddies, whom he considered the real heroes, were buried back on Iwo Jima. Gagnon died in 1979 and Bradley in 1994. A year later a second stamp, celebrating the 50th anniversary of the first Iwo Jima stamp, was issued with a retouched copy of the original Rosenthal photograph, which is just one more conformation of the singular place it has in American history.
an enduring tribute to fallen heroes:
This is such an awesome photograph to begin with and the poster is just classy. Any historian or patriot will love to hang this in their den or in their place of business as a tribute to the American soldiers - present and long gone and to show that our flag still flies proudly.
| Binding: | Kitchen | | Color: | Unframed |
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