THIS DAY IN HISTORY: Raising The Flag During the Battle of Iwo Jima In 1945 in World War II
By Space Coast Daily // February 23, 2023
February 23, 1945
Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima is a historic photograph taken on February 23, 1945, by Joe Rosenthal.
It depicts five United States Marines and a United States Navy hospital corpsman raising a U.S. flag atop Mount Suribachi, during the Battle of Iwo Jima in World War II.
The photograph was extremely popular, being reprinted in thousands of publications.
Later, it became the only photograph to win the Pulitzer Prize for Photography in the same year as its publication, and came to be regarded in the United States as one of the most significant and recognizable images of the war, and quite possibly the most reproduced photograph of all time.
The United States eventually secured the 8-square-mile island, located approximately 760 miles south of Tokyo, but not without sacrifice. American troops would fight for a month more after taking Mount Suribachi and the first of two Japanese airfields.
Capturing Iwo Jima was of strategic importance to B-29 air raids on mainland Japan. It also demonstrated to the Americans that the Japanese army would defend their lands at all costs, something which influenced United States’ decision to bomb Hiroshima and Nagasaki later that year.
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