| As landing craft are pounded in the heavy surf behind them, United States Marines from the 4th Marine Division move toward Airfield Number 1 moments after landing on Iwo Jima. The Marines found the fine black volcanic ash of Iwo Jima difficult to walk or run. A Marine passes a comrade-in-arms that has already been killed in action, and other wounded are piled up in a ditch in the right background. Mount Suribachi is in the far center background. Amtracs and a wrecked Japanese lighter are in the far left background. The Marine closest to the camera carries an M1 carbine; the Marine behind him carries an M1917 Browning 30 caliber heavy machine gun. Photo by Joe Rosenthal (October 9, 1911 – August 20, 2006). He would later write, “Concerned with survival, my thoughts naturally turned to my Marine comrades in the landing craft. They were really just kids, seventeen or eighteen or nineteen years old. I was, comparatively speaking, an old man of thirty-three, in reasonable shape, but on the short side (I am only five-foot-five) and wearing glasses. I talked as little as possible to the kids. I knew what these beach landings were like. Some of these Marines, many of them as it turned out, would die in just a few moments, and maybe me with them. I guess it was selfish, but I didn’t want to get to know them too well and then see them fall to enemy fire. They were kids. They hadn’t lived yet. To see them die here, now, someone I had gotten to know, that would be terrible.” “The noise was overpowering, more disconcerting even than the threat of death. Too often, I missed a picture as an explosion threw up the sand in a black shower but disappeared before I could raise my camera. “After hitting the beach, the first thing I did was sort out a lot of confusing activity, and intuition played a great part in that. I missed as much or more than I could catch. Often the sound of an explosion nearby overpowered my thought process, the sheer sound of it taking over all of my attention.” “The picture part is another question. Often there was an explosion, but what I saw was so often gone before I could raise my camera…sound and smoke lingered on. But the picture part was gone…I found myself turning from one loud, disturbing sound to another…and at the same time trying to get peripheral vision working so I could see more things happening…at the same time quickly respond to them…and look for composition of the picture…I didn’t want to just snap away. A picture requires substance…it requires a kind of composition that emphasizes what’s in the photo.” “I have said this before, and I have written this before, and I mean it with all my heart. I say it again because it is one of the strongest recollections I have of that day more than a half century ago. Surviving that beach on D-Day was like walking in rain without getting wet.” “Iwo sand was loose and gray/black…it was hard to move at anything that resembled running speed. As I ducked from shell hole to shell hole, I spotted bodies and body parts of those who ran this route before me…I remember patches of sand discolored to a deep red black by the blood of those who proceeded me… “Death on this beach was violent…more so than other beaches. That is because it was mortar fire that killed so many…not rifle or machine gun fire…though they took their toll, too. But the mortars were powerful explosives…so very many died instantly from the fierce blast of a nearby mortar round…their bodies literally torn apart instantly by the tremendous force of the mortar.” “As much as the flag picture meant to me and to many others, I have always believed that these pictures on the beach captured the real story of Iwo Jima. They showed valor, gallantry, and courage in the deadly moments of the assault. I watched those Marines. They just kept coming and coming and coming. I watched them run past their dead and wounded, across the deadly beach where the Japanese mortars were so finely zeroed in on the attack zones. “Japanese commanders, Kuribayashi probably among them, told their troops that Americans were afraid to die and that the Japanese therefore were superior fighters. The beaches of Iwo Jima proved that theory wrong.” | |
| Image Filename | wwii1841.jpg |
| Image Size | 650.76 KB |
| Image Dimensions | 3000 x 2000 |
| Photographer | Joe Rosenthal |
| Photographer Title | |
| Caption Author | Written or Adapted by Jason McDonald |
| Date Photographed | February 19, 1945 |
| Location | |
| City | |
| State or Province | Iwo Jima |
| Country | Bonins |
| Archive | |
| Record Number | |
| Status | Caption ©2026 MFA Productions LLC Please Do Not Duplicate or Distribute Without Permission; Image in the Public Domain |
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