Six bronze Marines raise their flag above you at the United States Marine Corps War Memorial, known worldwide as the Iwo Jima Memorial.
On February 23, 1945, six Marines raised a flag on the summit of Mount Suribachi, a volcanic peak on the island of Iwo Jima in the Pacific Ocean. Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal photographed the moment — not the first flag raising, which he missed, but a second, larger flag substituted later that day. His photograph was transmitted around the world within hours.
The photograph won the 1945 Pulitzer Prize. It became the basis for the Third War Loan campaign, which sold two hundred twenty million dollars in war bonds. Three of the six men in the photograph were killed in action on Iwo Jima within weeks of the flag raising. Three survived the war.
Sculptor Felix de Weldon saw the photograph and began working from it immediately, first building a plaster model, then the massive bronze you see here. The statue is one of the largest bronze sculptures in the world. The six figures stand thirty-two feet tall. The flagpole rises sixty feet.
The battle for Iwo Jima lasted thirty-six days. Nearly seven thousand Americans were killed. Over twenty-one thousand Japanese defenders died — almost the entire garrison. Admiral Chester Nimitz wrote of the battle: 'Uncommon valor was a common virtue.'
The memorial was dedicated by President Eisenhower in 1954 on the Marine Corps's one hundred seventy-ninth birthday.