An Honorary Marine

Joe Rosenthal was the fearless photographer who took the famous Mt. Suribachi photo of Marines raising the American Flag on Iwo Jima. He also went into battle side by side with Marines who were dying all around him. He hit the beaches with the first wave of Marines landing under intense fire and later recalled, "The situation was impossible, no man who survived the beach can tell you how he did it. "It was like walkiing through rain and not getting wet". He kept a framed certificate declaring him an honorary Marine, which he said was his proudest possession.

Joe was a modest and unassuming man, he made very little money from the sale of the picture and was gratified to get what he did. (some estimates are less than $10,000) In a 1995 interview he stated that, "every once in a while someone teases me that I could have been rich. But I'm alive. A lot of the men who were there are not. And a lot of them were badly wounded. I was not. And so I don't have the feeling someone owes me for this." Can you imagine someone saying this nowadays?!

After the war, Rosenthal returned to work for the Associated Press as a heroic celebrity, a role that embarrassed him. He often said that the real heroes were the young men he called "my Marines," who fought and died on Iwo Jima, and that he was just a newsman with a camera. "I took the picture," he said. "The Marines took Iwo Jima." 

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