Setting the record straight on Iwo Jima

This being Memorial Day Weekend (I cringe when I hear some moron call it “Memorial Weekend”), Maria has s fitting column in the paper today.
She recounted the story of how we helped one of the forgotten Iwo Jima first flag-raisers get the recognition he had been denied more than 60 years. Unfortunately, the recognition came a few months after his death, but his family and fellow Marines appreciated the effort.
Phil Ward was a Marine from Crawfordsville, Ind. who was a member of the patrol sent up Mount Suribachi fairly early in the battle for Iwo Jima and at a point where there were still plenty of Japanese holed up in the mountain that had been transformed into a veritable fortress. Ward and his buddies were tasked with raising the Stars and Stripes on the summit of Suribachi, the highest point on the island.
They found a piece of water pipe, tied the flag to it and jammed it into the ground. Ray Jacobs, the last surviving member of that patrol, told me in a phone interview that they immediately heard shouts and cheers from the Marines below and in seconds the Navy ships anchored just offshore took up the din with sirens and horns.
Jacobs didn’t say so, but I suspect it was the high point of his entire life.
A Marine combat photographer by the name of Lou Lowrey was there and shot several photos of the event.
The moment was short-lived however, because they immediately came under fire from Japanese hidden in caves in the cone of the volcanic crater of Suribachi.
Lowrey scrambled for cover and fell a short distance down the slope, damaging his camera.
Later that day, a larger, more conspicuous flag was sent up the mountain. Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal, who died a few months ago, won a Pulitzer Prize for his iconic photo of that second flag-raising.
By chance, Rosenthal’s images were transmitted to San Francisco first and Lowrey’s pictures, however historic, never got the attention they deserved. Likewise, the men in that first flag-raising patrol faded into the mists of history. One man, John Bradley, participated in both flag-raisings. His son James wrote about the second flag-raising in “Flags of Our Fathers,” a best-selling book that Clint Eastwood turned into a major motion picture.
Rosenthal’s flag-raising picture was published on the front page of nearly every newspaper in the United States and was the inspiration for the U.S. Marine War Memorial near Arlington National Cemetery. The Marine Corps became so heavily invested in the image that very little effort was made to set the record straight on the men and the circumstances of the first flag-raising.
In fact, official Marine Corps histories denied that Phil Ward and Ray Jacobs were among the men in the Lowrey photos, even though they and their families knew better.
Phil Ward returned home to Crawfordsville where he lived out the rest of his life until he died of cancer just after Christmas, 2005. It was generally known that he had fought on Iwo Jima, but just about nobody in town knew he was among the first flag-raisers.
Maria was managing editor of the Crawfordsville Journal Review at the time. The day his obit ran in the paper, Maria got a call from Chuck Tatum, another Marine Iwo vet living in California, telling her about Phil’s contribution to history on Suribachi.
Knowing I’m a World War II history buff, Maria called me at home and gave me Chuck’s phone number.
Together, and with the help of young historian Dustin Spence, a California theatre student who hoped to play the role of Phil Ward in the Eastwood movie, we unraveled the story. It wasn't easy because Leatherneck, the official Marine Corps magazine, resisted the idea that Ward and Jacobs were in the Lowery photos. The editor of the magazine told me flat-out that they might have been on the mountain, but they’re not in the pictures.
Over the next few months, Spence put together a comprehensive presentation that, fueled by the publicity created by the Journal Review and carried worldwide by the AP, persuaded the Marines to amend the record and officially recognize Phil and Ray as being in the Lowery pictures. Incidentally, it was only through Spence’s research that James Bradley learned his dad had also been among the first flag-raisers – the only Marine to participate in both events. Apparently the elder Bradley never thought it was important enough to mention. Bradley subsequently updated later editions of his book to include Ward and Jacobs.
Jacobs, who went on to become a newscaster in the San Francisco area, was the last surviving participant of either flag-raising. He died Jan. 29, 2008 at the age of 82 of natural causes in a Redding, Calif., hospital.