Joe Rosenthal's iconic photo of US Marines raising the flag on the summit of Mt Suribachi, Iwo Jima, Feb 23, 1945.

The photo won the 1945 Pulitizer Prize for photography. It was used on war bond drives, and even depicted on postage stamps.



The photograph was also used as the model for a Marine Corp memorial which stands in Arlington Virginia.



Shown in the photograph are;
Left to right: Ira Hayes, Harold Schultz, Michael Strank, Franklin Sousley, Rene Gagnon, and Harlon Block.




Only Hayes, Gagnon, and Schultz  survived the battle. Strank and Block were killed on March 1, six days after the flag-raising, Strank by a shell, possibly fired from an offshore American destroyer and Block a few hours later by a mortar round. Sousley was shot and killed by a Japanese sniper on March 21, a few days before the island was declared secure.

Ira Hayes, following the war, was plagued with depression brought on by survivor guilt and became an alcoholic. His tragic life and death in 1955 at the age of 32 were memorialized in the 1961 motion picture The Outsider.