0:00 For more than seventy years, the world had the wrong names for some of the men in one of history’s most famous photographs.0:09 Yeah.0:09 And that’s not even the most surprising part of the story.0:13 Last week, we said that every iconic photo has a story the image itself can’t tell.0:19 This one, Joe Rosenthal’s Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima, might be the ultimate example of that.0:26 It’s an image everyone thinks they know.0:29 Right.0:30 You see six Marines, a flag, a mountain.0:33 You see victory.0:34 But what the picture doesn't show you is the thirty-six-day battle.0:39 It doesn't show you the twenty-seven thousand American casualties.0:44 It doesn't show you that on February twenty-third, 1945, when Rosenthal clicked the shutter, the fight was FAR from over.0:53 So set the scene for me.0:55 What’s actually happening in that single frame?0:58 It’s chaos.0:59 Joe Rosenthal, he's an Associated Press photographer, and he's just scrambled up Mount Suribachi.1:06 But here’s the first thing the photo doesn't tell you: this is the SECOND flag being raised that day.1:14 Wait—the second?1:15 I thought this was the moment of capture.1:18 It was, but the first flag they put up was too small.1:22 The commanders down below couldn't see it through the smoke and the haze of battle.1:28 They needed a bigger one, for morale.1:31 So a second, larger flag was sent up.1:33 What Rosenthal captured wasn’t so much a spontaneous act of conquest, but… um, a logistical replacement.1:41 So the iconic moment was really about visibility.1:45 Exactly.1:45 And Rosenthal almost missed it.1:48 He was busy piling up rocks and a sandbag to get a better angle, thinking he was just getting a shot of the second flag going up.1:57 He swung his camera around and shot it without even looking through the viewfinder.2:03 One four-hundredth of a second.2:06 He had no idea he’d just captured one of the most famous images of all time.2:11 And the men.2:12 We see their shapes, this incredible composition of effort, but we don’t see their faces.2:19 Who were they?2:20 The six men eventually identified are Harlon Block, Harold Keller, Franklin Sousley, Ira Hayes, Michael Strank, and Rene Gagnon.2:29 But the tragedy behind the symbol is staggering.2:33 Sergeant Strank, Corporal Block, and Private Sousley were all killed in action on Iwo Jima within days of that photo being taken.2:42 Oh, wow.2:43 So they never even knew the fame that picture would bring.2:47 They never saw it.2:49 They raised a flag, and then they went back to fighting, and they died.2:54 And that brings us to the identities.2:57 For decades, the Marine Corps officially misidentified some of them.3:02 It wasn’t until investigations in 2016 and 2019 that they were all correctly named.3:08 How does a mistake like that last for seventy years?3:12 Fog of war.3:13 Survivor’s guilt.3:14 The rush to turn these men into national heroes.3:17 Remember, the photo hit newspapers on February twenty-fifth, just two days later.3:23 It became a symbol overnight.3:25 It was on posters, stamps… it helped fund the war effort.3:30 The country needed heroes.3:32 And one of those heroes, Ira Hayes… his story is different.3:36 Yeah.3:36 Ira Hayes was a Pima man from a reservation in Arizona.3:40 He survived the battle, but he was haunted by it.3:44 Noah McMullen, a Legion commander who just honored Hayes this year, said he was always a “reluctant hero.” The fame was a heavy burden for a man who’d seen so much death.3:57 He felt he hadn't earned it.3:59 It’s such a strange contrast.4:01 You have this image that becomes the absolute pinnacle of American heroism and sacrifice, winning a Pulitzer Prize.4:09 And then you have the reality behind it: it’s the second flag, some of the men died days later, and others were misidentified for decades.4:20 It’s the classic tension of photojournalism.4:23 The picture is true.4:24 It happened.4:25 Six men really did struggle to raise that flag.4:29 But it’s not the whole truth.4:31 The photograph freezes a moment of hope.4:34 But the war kept grinding on.4:36 The film footage of that moment, shot by Sergeant Bill Genaust?4:41 He was also killed in action nine days later.4:44 So the image becomes a stand-in for the entire brutal, costly victory.4:49 It has to.4:50 A single frame can’t contain a thirty-six-day battle.4:54 It can’t show you the twenty-one thousand Japanese soldiers who died defending that island, or the survivor’s guilt that plagued Ira Hayes for the rest of his life.5:06 It shows one moment of collective effort.5:09 And maybe, you know, that’s what people needed to see.5:13 It's a reminder that a photograph is a starting point, not an ending.5:18 Always.5:19 It’s the beginning of a question.5:21 And we owe it to the people in the frame to go looking for the answers.
