-So you all should see that the room has changed.
I'm going to start my webcam up so you can see me.
Okay. There we go.
Hello, everybody.
So my name, as you heard, is Chrissy,
and we will be connecting a little bit later
with the National Museum of the Marine Corps in Virginia,
and I have two special guests
that I'll be introducing you to from that museum.
So how the program will work,
just to give you a little outline,
is that I will spend about 15 minutes or so
overviewing the war in the Pacific
and specifically Iwo Jima,
and then we're going to turn it over
to the National Museum of the Marine Corps,
and we will have Jim Bish,
who is the teacher in residence there,
and also, this wasn't advertised,
but a surprise for you all watching live,
a World War II veteran.
His name is Mr. Frank Matthews,
and he was a flamethrower on Iwo Jima.
A couple tips related to that is that you guys see this
Q-and-A pod right below me here.
I would love for you all to type in questions for me,
for Mr. Bish, for Mr. Matthews throughout the entire program,
especially questions
for our World War II veteran, Mr. Matthews.
When we get to the part where we're talking with him,
I'll be looking at your student questions
in that Q-and-A pod to ask him,
and so I might be giving you guys,
you know, a little bit of a shout-out
and choosing one of your questions,
so please fill in that Q-and-A pod.
Also, there will be another way to interact, poll questions,
and I'm actually going to start this presentation off
with a poll question for you guys out there.
So I'm going to bring it up right now,
and I'm going to expand it so you can see it.
So my first question to start off our conversation today is
how did the United States enter World War II?
I'm going to give you guys some time to think about it.
It's an easy question hopefully starting off today,
but hopefully it'll get a little harder.
Okay.
You guys, you know what you're talking about.
I'm going to expand the results here.
So, yes, for those of you who said the fourth choice,
"Japan attacked Pearl Harbor, Hawaii," yes.
That was how the United States,
or the day after is when the United States
officially entered the war, so very good, guys.
Awesome warm-up question.
I'm going to end the poll right now, and let's see here.
Let me get this out of the way.
So, yes, this...
What you all will see on the screen
is the very famous front page of the Honolulu Star Bulletin,
"War! Oahu Bombed by Japanese Planes."
That byline says, "Six known dead,"
but when the day was over, 2,400 plus Americans had died
in the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor,
and then, of course, this famous speech happened the day after.
Let me make sure you guys can hear that.
All right. -Yesterday, December 7th, 1941,
a date which will live in infamy,
the United States of America
was suddenly and deliberately attacked by naval and air forces
of the Empire of Japan.
-Okay, so that was Franklin Delano Roosevelt's
very famous "Day of Infamy" speech to Congress
where he asked Congress to declare war on Japan,
which happens, and in a few days after that,
Germany declares war on the United States,
so officially, the United States is at war,
and we are specifically talking about today,
of course, the war in the Pacific theater,
which you can see behind me,
and, of course, specifically Iwo Jima.
So, there had to be a strategy involved in the Pacific here,
and that's what we're going to go to from the next slide,
so you can see the entire Pacific theater
in this next slide.
And, you know, we had to have a strategy
because we didn't have airplanes
that could fly to Japan from Pearl Harbor
or from the United States from the mainland
to attack the Japanese home islands,
so what we have to do
is we have to get a little bit closer to...
even eventually for the potential
of even landing forces on Japan.
So we're trying to get closer and closer and closer,
and that strategy is called island hopping,
which we're going to see come up on-screen in a second.
So the attack on Pearl Harbor was December 7th of 1941,
and there it is, the island-hopping strategy,
and then there were...
Midway was the first Allied victory,
Guadalcanal later after that in August of 1942,
the first Allied offensive,
and you're going to see we're trying to get closer
and closer to Japan with each landing
on these different islands.
Next, taking the Gilbert and Marshall Islands,
the Marianas, that'll come into our story in just 1 second,
back to the Philippines,
and then of course Iwo Jima,
what we'll be talking about today
and then, eventually, after Iwo Jima, Okinawa.
So you see how this strategy is moving us closer and closer
to those Japanese home islands
to eventually launch not only air attacks
but, as I said, potentially the possibility
of staging an actual invasion.
So at this time, when we...
It is 1944, and we are fighting on the Mariana Islands,
and a new powerful weapon is ready,
and it actually brings up my second poll question
for you all.
It's going to come up on-screen in just one second.
What do you think that new weapon was?
And this is kind of a different poll question.
You type in your answers versus selecting one.
What do you think that powerful weapon
was that was ready to use at this time?
I'm going to broadcast your results in just one second.
Whoa, lots of results coming in.
All right.
You'll see that almost everybody is saying the atomic bomb.
So, actually, I kind of tricked you.
I was waiting to see that response,
but it's actually a different weapon.
We're a little too early in the war
for the atomic bomb to be ready.
So, sorry, that was a little bit of a trick question.
Let me show you that weapon that was.
The B-29 bomber.
It was called the Superfortress.
The crew, 10 to 14 men, it could fly 3,250 miles
and could carry 20,000 pounds of bombs,
and these planes were ready to fly
to attack the Japanese home islands.
There's a problem, though.
Let me show you that problem right here on the next slide.
You can see that the flight path from the Mariana Islands
to the Japanese home islands,
there's something kind of smack-dab
in the middle of that flight path,
and that is Iwo Jima.
Now, if B-29s are spotted on Iwo Jima,
there are airfields on Iwo Jima
where the Japanese can launch a counterattack
against these B-29s
so that these U.S. aircraft might not ever make it
to the Japanese home islands to attack.
Also, they could even send messages,
send communications to the Japanese home islands,
saying that these attacks are coming,
taking away that element of surprise,
and, on that very long journey between the Mariana Islands
and the Japanese home islands, if those B-29s get in trouble,
if they have some mechanical failures,
there's really nowhere for them to land that's safe,
so they're ditching their plane, potentially,
in the middle of the Pacific Ocean.
So we had to take Iwo Jima, because, you can see,
it's right in the middle of that flight path.
Also keep in mind, in this island-hopping strategy,
it's just putting us one step closer
to those Japanese home islands.
So here is Iwo Jima.
Notice something interesting about this map.
First off, I want you guys to pick out one more poll question.
I know I'm asking a lot today.
I'm going to try to make sure this doesn't interfere
with all of the map.
Do you guys see...What unit of measure for this map?
It's very interesting and plays a big role in our story here.
And I'm going to broadcast those results in just one second.
All right.
Yes.
Look at that.
It's in yards. Isn't that really interesting?
Usually when we see maps, that scale is usually within miles.
Iwo Jima is such a small island that it's actually...
Let me show you the dimensions.
It is two miles wide by four miles long,
so eight square miles total.
With the island being so small, there was, you know,
a lot of close-range fighting,
which made the casualty-rate skyrocket,
and we think about it.
There are about 70,000 U.S. troops,
mostly Marines and some Navy,
and close to 22,000 Japanese troops on the island.
If you put, you know, add those two numbers together,
almost 100,000 troops tightly packed
on this teeny, tiny island of eight square miles,
and, as I said, that close-range fighting
pushed up the casualty rate.
And there were three main airfields
that we wanted to attack
because this is where the Japanese
were launching those counterattacks to hit our B-29s,
and you can see them here, and also at the bottom,
a very distinct geographical feature of Iwo Jima
is Mount Suribachi,
and we'll be seeing that in just one second.
So the landings occur on February 19th of 1945,
so that 70th anniversary was on Thursday.
And notice something interesting about the sand in this picture,
and I actually have sand from Iwo Jima right here,
not a typical sand you would see on the beach,
you know, if you go on vacation or something like that.
Notice it is black sand.
Mount Suribachi is a volcano,
and you can see here that the rest of the island
is covered in this black sand,
and that's what the Marines were landing on that day.
You can see a Marine here using a flamethrower
on the island of Iwo Jima,
and we will be talking to a flamethrower in just one second.
And in the distance, in this picture,
you can see Mount Suribachi, the highest point of Iwo Jima.
It was a lookout for the Japanese,
and really, from that top of Suribachi,
you could see just about the entire island,
so that lookout point needed to be taken
and taken pretty early on.
And here you can see this black sand was tricky to get through,
sinking in, whether it was people or vehicles or supplies,
would sink into this soft black, you know, ashy sand.
And finally, on February 23rd of 1945,
today being the 70th anniversary,
our Marines went up Mount Suribachi.
They first sent a scout, a lookout group,
to make sure everything was okay.
That group, you know, didn't find any resistance,
so a squad went up, and they went up with a flag
to put on top of Mount Suribachi.
Now it was a smaller flag, and when word actually...
When that flag went up and word went out that,
you know, that the Marines had finally gotten to the top,
you know, people were... You know, it was a moment
where people were cheering from the beaches below
if they saw it,
but the flag was kind of small,
and we're actually going to talk.
The Marine Corps Museum will enlighten us
a little bit more on the two different flags.
This was such a small flag that, eventually though,
there was a second flag that was put up there
and hence this very iconic picture
by Joe Rosenthal, photographer.
And this is the photograph that we all know from Iwo Jima,
and, remember, this is the second flag raising,
not the first, of this much larger flag.
A question I get a lot and pretty often hear at the museum,
"I heard that that flag raising was staged, that it was posed,"
and I want to play you all actually a video
from our collection here
about, actually, no, it's not posed,
and you're going to hear from Norm Hatch
telling you about the story of the second flag raising.
What I'll do, everyone, while this is playing
is I'm going to pause my video and audio,
and then I'm going to play the video,
and then I'll come back when it's over.
-I was the photographic officer for the Fifth Marine Division,
and the Fifth Marine Division had,
in its area of responsibility, Mount Suribachi.
It was decided that they would send a patrol up
to see whether or not it was secure
because the mountain was honeycombed
with caves and positions.
It had been a significant point of observation for the Japanese,
and so we had to get rid of it
because it was causing too much of a devastation.
So the patrol went up and said,
"Well, it looks like it's pretty well-secured."
So they sent up another group, and with them, they had a flag,
and, sure enough, they found a good pole up there,
and they put it on it and put the flag up,
but it was too small.
It was obvious to everybody on the shore
that something had to be done.
My boss came to me and said,
"Norm, they're going to put up a larger flag
so that it can be seen by everybody,"
so I got word to two of my photographers, Bill Genaust,
a movie man, and Bob Campbell, a still photographer,
and I said, "You better get over there to the mountain and go up.
They're going to put another flag up."
On the way, they discovered Joe Rosenthal also going up.
When the second flag went up, Rosenthal just got it by luck,
and so did Bill Genaust.
They were talking to each other,
and Genaust was on Rosenthal's left,
and he decided to go over and get on Rosenthal's right
just at the time they started to pick the flag up,
and Rosenthal said, "Hey, Bill, it's going right now,"
and Bill turned around and shot,
and Rosenthal shot, and that was it.
There was several things that caused the myth
about the flag raisings.
One was the fact that Joe Rosenthal was asked
when he arrived at Guam
whether or not he had posed a photograph
on top of Mount Suribachi,
and he said, yes, but the picture he posed
was the group of men underneath the flagpole.
Then there were a lot of professional photographers
that thought the picture was so good that he must have posed it,
and Joe's answer to that was,
"If I was going to pose a picture, I wouldn't pose it
with everybody's face turned away from me."
It was an uplifting thing for the public at home.
They thought that meant the battle was over.
It really wasn't because the battle went on
for another 27 or 28 days,
but the public now has gone through four years of war.
They were tired.
They needed a lot of spurring to keep going in the war plans,
and by appearing on the front pages
of practically every newspaper in the country, it did it.
-So there's a little bit of background
about the two flag raisings, and, as I said,
the National Museum of the Marine Corps,
they're going to fill us in a little bit more, too.
Before I close out with my part,
I just want to give you a few statistics on Iwo Jima,
and they're going to pop up on-screen in just one second.
The battle actually occurred for a little over a month.
Most people think of that iconic flag raising
within the first week,
but there was many, many days of battle after that.
19,000 U.S. wounded, close to 7,000 U.S. deaths,
and this is actually the only battle in the Pacific
during the war where U.S. casualties outnumbered
the Japanese casualties,
so if you add up the U.S. deaths with wounded,
25,000-plus casualties compared to
21,000 or so casualties on the Japanese side.
27 Medals of Honor were awarded on this teeny, tiny island.
But after it was taken,
those B-29 bombers going to and from the Japanese home islands,
many of them made emergency landings --
over, I think, 2,400 emergency landings on Iwo Jima --
which saved the lives of 22,000 U.S. aircrewmen.
All right, so I'm going to actually end with that,
with my part, and I'm going to turn it over
to the National Museum of the Marine Corps.
And, as I said, we will be connecting with Jim Bish.
He's the teacher and resident
at the National Museum of the Marine Corps
and also veteran Frank Matthews, and let's see here.
I'm going to bring up their presentation.
-Can you hear me? -Let's see.
Looks like they're about to connect with us.
All right, Jim.
-Can you hear me? -I see you there.
Let's see if I can hear you.
Yep, I can hear you just fine.
Wonderful. Thank you so much for joining us today,
especially because I know your weather has been a little rotten
over the past few days, too, up in Virginia.
So I really, really appreciate you both being here today.
-Thank you. As your teacher said,
my name is Jim Bish and I'm the teacher in residence
at the National Museum of the Marine Corps,
and sitting right next to me is Frank Matthews,
who will be joining us in just a little bit for some questions
and answers as he lived on the island for about a month.
Okay.
What we're going to talk about first of all
is the flag raising.
I'm going to spend probably 5 to 10 minutes
dealing with the flag raising.
As you can tell, that image is very important
to the National Museum of the Marine Corps.
Not only is it one of the most iconic images
in American history,
but if you look at the design of our museum
in Triangle, Virginia,
it is designed around the triangular shape
that the Marines and the Naval Corpsmen
made as they put up the flag in Rosenthal's photo,
and of course you've got the mast of the ship --
or, excuse me, the mast of the flag --
coming out in a very similar design.
So it's such an important image
that the architecture of this building
really reflects that.
Okay.
That's fine.
-All right. I'll go to the next slide there.
-Yeah. As Chrissy mentioned, going up with the flag,
the Easy Company was the group
that was assigned to take the flag up, and Harold Schrier
was given the flag by his Lieutenant Colonel Johnson,
and he said, "When you go up there, make sure,
if you get to the top, put the flag up,"
so there was a group of about 40 Marines
that headed up the mountain to put the flag up.
This was in the early-morning hours, probably 9:30 to 10:00,
on February 23rd, 1945.
Okay.
And, of course, embedded within those...
-All right. -...40 Marines was Lou Lowery.
Lou Lowery was the staff sergeant photographer
with Leatherneck Magazine,
and he's going to be the man
that actually shot the photographs
documenting the first flag raising
on south of Mount Suribachi.
Okay, and what you have here is
just a couple of images dealing with different Marines
putting together that first flag raising.
I'm going to turn this over to Frank now
because I know he's got a good story of why those poles,
those metal poles, were even on Mount Suribachi.
It seems just kind of luck that they would find anything
to put the flags up with.
-Yeah. -Mount Suribachi, I was there,
and it was a very important part
of the Japanese military to live on Iwo Jima,
because that island, for the last 250 years,
the Japs have lived there,
and it doesn't have any freshwater source,
so the Japanese have survived all those years
by collecting water, rainwater,
usually at the top of Mount Suribachi.
So the pipes are used to bring all that rainwater down
to a cistern inside of the volcano,
and when our Naval gunfire got into a fight
with the Japanese big guns on top of Suribachi,
of course, we knocked all those pipes apart,
so when they looked for a flagpole,
all they had to do was look around for a piece of a pipe
that had been used one time for the Japanese
to bring water down into that cistern.
-Thank you, Frank.
So you get a little bit there about some reason why.
You can go to the next slide.
-Sure. -Okay.
Again, these are just some more images that Lowery had taken
while he was waiting for the flag to go up.
You can go ahead to the next one,
and here they're getting ready to put the flag up.
Unfortunately, Lou Lowery didn't have the...
I don't know what it was, but unlike Rosenthal,
he did not capture the moment of the flag going up,
and that's really the real important thing.
It's the act of doing, the act of...
If you think of a basketball shot, is always the time
when you're at the highest point of action,
letting the ball loose or something like that,
and even though there were a lot of photographs
taken that day by Lou Lowery, none of them captured the moment
of what the second flag will reveal,
and that's the sad story
about between the first and second flag raising
is the second image, the second flag going up,
that image of Rosenthal's,
really just overpowered even the events that happened
as far as the flags over on top of Mount Suribachi.
You can go ahead to the next one.
Okay, this is the next flag --
the next image of the first flag raising by Lou Lowery.
It's flying in the air.
Of course, we don't have it up there,
just planting it into the ground,
you know, kind of packing dirt around it
so that it can be seen.
This was roughly about 10:30 in the morning,
and at that time, as Chrissy mentioned before,
supposedly people that were around,
especially ships that were close off the shores of Iwo Jima,
started blowing their horns, things like that.
It was obviously something big had happened,
and that's at the point that Japanese,
realizing what had taken place,
they didn't like that story so much.
Okay, and this is when Japanese soldiers came out of the cave,
and there was... An enemy grenade was tossed.
Lou Lowery, in the explosion and stuff, he was...
He fell to the ground with his camera.
The camera was damaged, but he was able
to save the film of that,
documenting that first flag raising.
The...Pretty much the small action
taken by the short firefight did not last that long,
and all the Japanese were taken care of that were up there
that had come out of their caves.
Okay.
Here, this is when you have the secretary of Navy,
James Forrestal,
was on-board with General Holland Smith,
and that's when they saw the flag up there,
and there are two important things that came out of this.
First of all, Smith reportedly told Holland,
or Forrestal reportedly told Holland Smith
that the raising of the flag on Mount Suribachi
means the Marine Corps will last for another 500 years,
and the second thing he thought, "You know,
that would be a great souvenir to have,"
so word was passed down,
and Chandler Johnson,
who was the commander,
the battalion commander, said,
"No, maybe. They're not going to capture that flag.
That's not going to be souvenir of theirs.
It's going to be ours,"
so they did go ahead and find a larger flag.
Go ahead.
The larger flag supposedly was taken off an LST-779.
There's some controversy about this.
The Marine Corps says it's LST-779.
There are other Coast Guard claims it was taken off LST-758,
some action, but as far as the official history,
779 is what it was,
and a man by the name of Tuttle went ahead
and found the flag, found the larger flag
that supposedly was at a depot
originally in Pearl Harbor, and from there, they...
It was handled to Corporal Gagnon
to take up the mountain for the second flag
raising to improve the sight
and make sure we had a larger flag
so more people could see it.
The flags were put up there really as a...[ Coughs ]
Excuse me. I've got a little cold.
As a morale builder for the Marines fighting below.
Okay.
And here you have...
Just behind the second group
that was going up with the second flag,
the larger flag, you have embedded three photographers.
One was Private Bob Campbell.
The other was Staff Sergeant Bill Genaust,
who was taking a movie picture,
and then embedded with them was AP photographer, Joe Rosenthal.
They met Lou Lowery coming down the mountain
as they were heading up,
and Lou Lowery said that they had already
taken pictures of the first flag,
but he said, "It's a great view from up there,
and go ahead and go up there and see what you can see,"
so the three men continued as Lou Lowery was coming down.
Okay.
These are pictures now taken by Bill Genaust.
He was the one with the movie camera,
so he caught the entire sequence of events
and still frames going up, and you can...
This kind of disproves any idea that this was staged
because, as you earlier mentioned,
Rosenthal and Genaust almost missed it
because they were getting set up for the camera,
and the Marines weren't paying attention
to what they were doing.
They had their job to do to get the flag up quickly
and then make sure that they're protected.
So, as a result, Genaust just got this,
and that's when he told Bill,
"Hey, it's going up," or Bill told Joe,
"It's going up," and Joe spun around
and caught the image that he did,
but this kind of takes you through a series of images
from the Genaust video to show you how it was,
and there's the second image.
Okay, and this is the one where 1/400th of a second
in Joe Rosenthal's life
would carry him through his lifetime.
You've got this one image he shot.
He didn't know he'd gotten it
because he turned around so quickly to shoot it,
and he thought, "You know, I don't know if I even got that,
so to make it worthwhile,
I need to photograph the pictures kind of like
Lowery did beforehand of Marines around the flag,"
so he did that just to make sure he had something
before he came off the mountain.
Okay.
-Oops, sorry, went too far. -That's fine.
We've got...
So at the time, Rosenthal really didn't know
if he had the pictures or what he even had.
He knew he had the photos that would later become known
as the Gung Ho images
that were the Marines around the photograph,
and that became part of the controversy,
because later the images would be sent off to Guam.
Joe would head down the mountain,
and by the time he got back off Mount Suribachi...
Is the images still there?
Can't see them on my end.
-Let's see here. Yeah.
Did it not show up? All right.
We've got the cropped image of Iwo Jima
that's up on the screen now.
Might be, yeah, issues with a --
little bit of loading on your end, but yeah,
we have the cropped image of Iwo up on screen right now.
-And with that, he went ahead and went down the mountain,
and at 1:00, he said he noticed his watch,
and it was at 1:00, and he sent them off to Guam.
They ended up getting right out to Guam.
They were developed in Guam, and again,
I can't see any images, so if you wanted to...
-Let me move forward. Yeah.
Now we have the New York Times...
-It was really remarkable that...
-...front page with that iconic photo.
-...because, within 17 hours, I mean, everybody
that had developed the photos on Guam knew what they had.
They go, "Oh, my goodness."
This is something that everybody recognized the importance,
so they quickly got those in the wire services,
and it was really remarkable in the day that it...
from 17 hours from the time that Rosenthal took the picture
that it was actually part of...
that it was in newspapers, and of course this is an image
that Chrissy had up earlier of the New York Times,
which is on the 25th of February.
So within 2 days after the shooting, 17 hours,
it was already in newspapers across the United States,
which, as I said, was really phenomenal to have then.
-Yeah, it was the quickest probably...
-It's pretty remarkable.
-...they've ever had that kind of turnaround, right?
-Now, unfortunately, the first film was sent later to Guam,
the first flag-raising pictures of Lowery,
and that became part of the controversies because,
when it ended up in American newspapers as the flag raising,
everybody just assumed there was one flag raising,
and that became part of the problem.
The second images did not make it to Guam until after the...
The first images, I should say, were not developed
until after the second one was developed,
and that was part of the problem.
Okay.
-And the next side shows the Gung Ho shot
and then the other shot where you can see Rosenthal...
-The Gung Ho shot is about...
-...taking the picture of that Gung Ho shot.
-...is pretty obvious.
The Gung Ho shot was proven that Rosenthal was there
taking pictures and Genaust,
and that's what later he would thank...
He would be asked...
Rosenthal would be asked if he posed those pictures.
They were talking about the real photograph of the flag raising,
and Rosenthal thought that it was the "Gung Ho" photos.
He said, "Yeah. We posed those. We had different people."
So that also added to the controversy because Rosenthal,
at that point, had not seen either one, okay?
-And then this one, yeah, shows...Oh, yeah.
I think you're talking about the controversy
about it being developed,
and, oh, and now into the 7th War Loan, saying,
"Oh, that picture's so iconic. How can we potentially use it"
-Yeah, that's Roosevelt. Roosevelt had noticed that
everybody was buying those images.
They couldn't get enough of them,
and he said, "You know what?
We're having problems because the 7th War Drive,
bond drive was having problems just getting enough money."
He said, "That's the image. That's what we're going to use,"
and unfortunately, he also said,
"Let's try to identify and find those Marines
and get those back here that were in that picture."
So, you can go ahead.
Yeah, and they... -Yeah, and then this shows
Rosenthal there printing, you know,
they're printing and printing and printing this image,
like you were saying, and then a picture with Rosenthal...
-The next one, you've got the Boy Scout troop...
-...with the Boy Scout troop, I think.
-...and, of course, he's... It just shows you how powerful.
It made Rosenthal an instant celebrity, as well.
Everybody wanted his name attached to the photo.
-And then this next one here
shows the six flag raisers with the one...
-Yeah, Mr. Hansen.
-...misidentified initially, the person, Hank Hansen.
-He's going to be unidentified throughout
the entire bond rally.
They're...Both Hansens died,
and as a result, nobody steps forward.
The man that actually knew that it was not...
correct was Ira Hayes, but he remained silent
because they didn't want to cause even more controversy
because the first flag raisers
were not brought back home for this.
So there was a lot of issues, and the Marines were dealing
with a lot of these issues with the conflict.
Then, of course, you have the second bond rally.
You go forward.
You're going to see Spencer Tracy and James Cagney.
-Oh, yeah. Let's see here.
Let me get to that.
-All the celebrity status of that image.
-Oh, there we go. There's that slide.
Yeah, James Cagney and Spencer Tracy.
-Okay. Go ahead. -Mm-hmm.
-And here you have, unfortunately, the flag was then
taken off Mount Suribachi.
It was brought back, and, unfortunately,
by the time that President Roosevelt
wanted the flag back here for the bond rally in that image,
they brought the flag back for this
to go along with the bond drive,
and, unfortunately, President Eisenhower died on April 12th.
So as a result of that,
the last days of his mourning period,
the flag flew over the Capitol Building
before it went out on the bond-drive rally.
-You mean President Roosevelt, yes?
-I mean President Roosevelt, yes,
before President Roosevelt's... during his funeral.
-Wow. -Okay?
-Mm-hmm. -Yeah.
This is the Bond Tour.
-And we got a picture of the Bond Tour here, yeah.
-Of course, you have the naval corpsmen.
John Bradley is on crutches. He was wounded.
Okay.
These are the three survivors...
-All right. And then them holding the flag.
-Within 28 days after the flag raising,
three of the five Marines
and one naval corpsman had been killed.
Three of the Marines had been killed,
and these were the only two Marine survivors, and Bradley,
that were part of the survivors
that were able to come back for the Bond Tour.
And this is...
in Los Angeles. This even shows you...
-See, right there, the Bond Tour in Los Angeles.
-...you've got the image on buildings
of how important that image was of Iwo Jima as the final...
So the flag, the Marines, Bradley,
were all on this Bond Tour,
which raised more money than any previous bond tour or bond drive
in World War II history.
Okay?
-And this stamp is important...
-Yeah. Next we have the...
-I have an actual... -...postage stamp.
-This is a first-day cover of the stamp.
This is an original.
It came out in July 1945...
-Oh, wow. -...from Washington, D.C.
It sold more stamps... People supposedly were lined up
for blocks to get that image of that first stamp.
A little bit of controversy
because there were alive people there.
They had three people that were alive, and the Post Office said
they would not allow for a stamp
to have anyone that's alive on a stamp.
So that finally was dealt with, and it supposedly became
the most purchased stamp through the '60s,
and legend has it that it was the most purchased stamp
by the Postal Service
up until the death of Elvis Presley in the 1970s.
Okay.
-Wow.
And then this shows
all their positions on the flag and then...
-This is after the bond rally. -...Harlon Block, identified.
-Ira Hayes finally went to Block's parents and said,
"You know, your son was the one that planted,
was at the base," and this added to more controversy.
Hansen was taken off then after they had enough proof
that it was Block,
so it's just one problem after another,
but you can imagine, for Marines,
this was just a small thing in a day of keeping alive.
Their real task was to keep alive
and keep their friends around them alive
and do their job of liberating Iwo Jima.
This was just something that was not that important,
by putting a pole up and doing what they did.
It took a few seconds out of their day,
so paying attention to who was actually holding onto that pole
was not something important to them at the time
as the image made it an important event.
Okay.
-Mm-hmm.
And then it looks like the mock-up
for the Marine Corps memorial,
which we see in these next couple images there with...
-Yeah. -...Truman also looking
at a sculpture...
-Right, and then, of course, by the late 1940s...
-...and then the, yeah, the erecting of the memorial.
-...the Marine Corp was going to put up the memorial
based upon that image,
which we know now was the Iwo Jima memorial,
and at that time, there was also controversy
because some of the Marines from the first,
and even Hansen's family,
who was identified with the second flag raising
for a while and then was removed,
they were not given the credit they felt
that they should have been given
because they were, especially the first flag raisers,
they were the ones that really cleared them out
and went up there and sacrificed their lives
to get the first flag up.
So, that -- And, of course, the Marine Corps
kind of squashed that for a while, too,
when they already had this huge image out there.
Then the second images came onboard.
They kind of, you know, said,
"Hey, we've already got an image. Don't mess up the story."
So it was a lot of unintended consequences all the way around.
-Mm-hmm. -And that...
And if you go to the end...
-Yep, all the way to the end here.
Oh, yeah. I think this is with the...
-The living flag raisers... -...living flag raisers...
-There's Bradley, and you've got...
-...at the dedication ceremony.
-...Gagnon, and you've got Hayes there
along with Vice President Nixon at the dedication,
and then if you go past that, again, that's a lasting monument
because our emblem
for the National Museum of the Marine Corps
is the image,
kind of, with the National Museum of the Marine Corps.
If you go to the very end,
which there you see again the real image
with the shape of our building here
at the National Museum of the Marine Corps triangle.
And with that... -Great.
Thank you so much, Jim.
I really appreciate it. -Sure.
-Can you take one question before we turn it over to Frank?
So speaking of controversy,
I don't know if you guys can speak to this,
but actually, the high school in North Platte, Nebraska,
they were asking,
"There's been controversy recently
about the identification of John Bradley
and that maybe not being accurate."
-You know, there's been... -Can you speak to that at all?
-...so many controversies in the last 45 or last 70 years
concerning the flag raising.
Recently, there have been some images looked at very closely
concerning John Bradley,
that he was misidentified
and that he shouldn't have been part of the second flag raising.
I would...A lot of people
that have really looked at that say that's suspect as well.
I don't know one way or the other.
I would suggest, though, that Bradley,
because he was one of those that were actually alive at the end,
that if there was any doubt throughout his time period,
that that would have risen before this,
but it is certainly, and I know, I think,
one of the areas
that it had circulated out of was out of Omaha.
Since I'm from Nebraska, I kept on some of that as well.
So go Huskers for you out there in North Platte,
and because this has always been controversial,
I'm sure that for the next 70 years,
there will continue to be much more controversy
over the flag raises.
-All right. Well, thank you so much, Jim, and yeah.
Now, students, prepare your questions
for our special guest today,
our other special guest, Veteran Frank Matthews.
-Glad to be here.
-Thank you so much for joining us today, Frank.
Great. Well, we're happy to have you, too.
I'm actually going to make our video, let's see,
a little bit bigger so everybody can see...
-Okay. -...you a little clearer here.
There we go.
So, yeah. So, now that you're on the big screen here,
so, I wanted to know, kind of,
we're going to go back to the beginning a little bit,
and I was curious, how old were you
when the attack on Pearl Harbor occurred, and when did you...
-When Pearl Harbor occurred...
-...you know, join up in the Marine Corps.
-...that would be, of course, 1941.
I was about 15 years old,
so I was in the second year of high school in South Carolina,
where I grew up, and for the next couple of years,
everything was a little tight.
You didn't do anything that you normally did,
but I graduated from high school 1943,
went immediately and joined the Marine Corps,
went down to Parris Island,
went through boot camp early '43,
and they sent me up to Quantico for a while.
And then Quantico, in the middle of August 1944, they came in,
and somebody knew that the battle of Iwo Jima
was going to happen,
and so they pulled us through, a whole bunch of us,
out of Quantico,
sent me on a troop train all the way down to New Orleans,
and we stopped there briefly, did calisthenics,
and then took a train on out to the West Coast.
And from there, we got aboard a troop transport,
went all the way out to Pearl Harbor,
and by early December 1944,
I had been assigned to the 4th Marine Division
on the island of Maui,
and the other, the 3rd and 4th and 5th Marine divisions,
those were the divisions that landed on Iwo Jima.
The 4th was stationed on Maui.
The 5th Division was on the big island of Hawaii.
The 3rd division was located in Guam.
We all got together, the 3rd, 4th, the 5th,
and we went from Pearl Harbor.
Took us about 6 weeks to go to Iwo Jima
on a huge convoy of ships,
and we landed on Iwo Jima.
I went in on the first day.
I was landing on the right flank of the island
where my division,
the 4th Division, was supposed to attack.
So we were on the opposite end of the island
from the flag raisers, the 5th Division.
28th Regiment out of the 5th Division raised the flag
then on the fourth day.
On that particular day, which was 70 years ago today,
I was just trying to get over having participated
in taking the first airfield on the previous day,
and it wasn't more than a day after that
that I got the first of three wounds that I got on Iwo Jima.
These wounds were not sufficient that I had to be evacuated.
I didn't want to be evacuated, so the corpsmen and, of course,
the medics kept me bandaged up.
I managed to tough it out until the end of the battle.
-Wow.
A lot of students -- Well, first off,
there's a lot of students in the audience saying,
"Thank you for your service."
I'm seeing that a lot.
And we also, we're seeing a lot of questions about,
you know, what was your job on the island?
They know flamethrower, and someone was curious about...
-I went in carrying Browning automatic rifle...
-...how much did the flamethrower even weigh?
-...at first, which is roughly akin to the AK-47
that they've used recently,
and it had a lot of good features,
and it was a very rugged weapon.
I carried for the first three weeks on Iwo Jima.
The last week, they switched me mostly to a flamethrower.
Flamethrower weighed 83 pounds.
I thought it was very unfair for them to ask me to carry it
because I only weighed 155 pounds myself,
but the flamethrower was what we call the M2 flamethrower,
and you can see pictures of that.
The flamethrower would carry enough fuel
for about a three-minute burst of flame.
We had to make that last all day, though,
or at least half a day, when we went out on patrol.
-Wow.
And then we're getting a few more questions, too,
about the conditions on Iwo Jima.
You know, what was it like? How was it living on the island?
What did you all eat...
-We landed on Iwo Jima in February.
-...while you were there, those sorts of things?
-Iwo Jima is the same latitude as Key West, Florida,
and you know how Key West, Florida is in February.
It's not too cold, and so then Iwo Jima is not too cold,
and anyway, you had some volcanic action still going on,
although the volcano there has not erupted in 24,000 years.
So that's Mount Suribachi.
I was not on Mount Suribachi.
I was on the other end of the island,
and so I didn't see the flag go up,
although I had a lot of buddies who did.
They were in the unit that raised it, the 28th,
but the 4th Division on the other end of the island,
we were concerned with taking the first,
and then we had two more airfields to take after that.
And our end of the island, there was a great deal
of the underground Japanese emplacements.
-And then, what... You know, what were --
What were some of the thoughts going through your head?
A lot of students were wondering if you were scared or...
-I get a lot of questions about that
from the Washington Post, for example.
-What was it like day to day? What you were thinking?
-One of their questions to me not too long ago was
was I afraid on Iwo Jima,
and I pointed to them that I had joined the 4th Division
about a month before we left
for Iwo Jima, and so I was...
The guys I was going into Iwo Jima with
had already been in four battles, 4th Division.
Iwo Jima was our fifth battle in World War II, so I was...
Well, the main thing that went through my mind
as we landed that morning,
which was 70 years ago on the 19th.
The main thing going through my mind was,
I was afraid, but not in the way you think.
I was afraid that I was going to do something stupid.
All of them had already been in combat. I never had been.
So that was my thought for the first few days on Iwo Jima --
"Don't do something I'm not supposed to."
Because all the other guys were old vets,
and they gave me a lot of good help, by the way.
-Did you...Now, you said you were wounded three times,
but weren't you the only
one of your squad to make it off, you know...
-On the last day that I was on...
-...still walking off Iwo Jima, correct?
-...Iwo Jima, which was the 28th day of the battle,
that was the last day that my unit was there,
so I had to leave whether I was well or not.
I had had three wounds, but none of them were sufficient
to put me off the island if I didn't want to be.
So on that last day, there were 36 gentlemen,
36 men in my platoon.
That's how many men there are in a Marine platoon,
but there was only one there that day as we got aboard
a ship heading back to Maui,
and that was me.
So we got off... We got on the ship,
and I was bandaged up somewhat, but I made it back to Maui,
and I can show you a picture
if it would mean anything to your viewers.
This is me about a week after we got back to Maui.
Can you see it?
-If you hold it up a little higher, closer to your face.
-That's what I looked like when I was 19...
-Yeah, there we go.
...about a week after we got back to Maui.
-Wow, and were you recovering from your wounds
then in Maui, and, you know, for the...
What happened through the rest of the war?
Were you ever, you know, you know,
assigned to any other battle or given other...
-Well, we were getting ready to invade Japan.
-...assignments or... before the war ended?
-And so we were getting... They built a mock village,
a mock Japanese village there on the island of Maui,
and we practiced getting ready to hit Japan,
which we never had to do because the war ended in August of 1945.
And I came home, and eventually, I went to college
and all that stuff later.
-Some students in the audience were wondering,
you know, how...
You know, I'm sure you saw, you know,
many terrible things on Iwo Jima.
You know, we talked about the battle being, you know,
at such close-range combat.
How did you deal with those things when you, you know,
either on the island or returning home?
You know, were those difficult things to get through...
-The first night on Iwo Jima was...
-...when you were back here in the States?
-...the worst for me
in terms of face-to-face combat with the Japanese.
We landed on the island, and our job was to get down
to where the 4th Division
had a 3rd Battalion of the 25th
had been almost cut to pieces.
They had started out the battle with 900 men on the morning
that we landed,
and by the afternoon, they were down to 150 survivors.
They lost 750 men, mostly killed.
So they got on the radio, and they said, "We need help,"
and my unit was a division reserve for the 4th Division.
They put us on several different vessels.
We didn't have access to Higgins boats.
We had to come in on what was called on LSM,
carried five tanks,
and they had already unloaded their tanks on the beach.
So they got us in,
but they couldn't get us in at the right place
because it was a total disaster on D-Day on Iwo Jima.
So they had to land us on the complete left flank
right near the volcano,
and then my unit had to walk almost a mile
until we got all the way down
to where we were supposed to be
on the complete other end of the beach.
And as we were walking along, we were trying to hold on
to the other four men in our fire team,
and we managed to get down there,
and we found that the Japanese were coming up
trying to retake that end of the beach
because they wanted to be able to fire
from both ends of the beach down the beach,
which they called their death trap.
And so they were coming up from underground,
and they had usually, they would have a sword,
or they would have some kind of a bayonet,
and you could see in their faces there in the flickering of light
from whatever light source was coming up there
that they were anticipating a little battle,
a little fight with the stupid Marines with a sword fight.
Well, we had bayonets, but we had no intention
of working on fighting them on their terms.
So we would do two things.
First, we would parry and knock their sword away
if they got that close.
The second thing is we would shoot,
and so I could see in a lot of faces, the Japanese,
as they died from my having just shot them,
you can see the contempt that were in their eyes.
"This stupid Marine didn't even know how to play the game."
I wasn't interested in playing their game,
and that went on the first night.
The next morning, the Navy brought in a great,
big battleship, the New Jersey,
and they forced the Japanese
to get back in their underground tunnels,
and we started getting organized on the beach,
but we were on the other end away from the flag.
A couple of students in the audience were wondering,
you know, did you have any good friends on, you know, Iwo Jima,
you know, from your squad, you know, and did some...
-One of my best friends on the island...
-...of maybe get potentially killed?
-...I don't remember how I got to know him,
was the division mail sergeant, and he was from Pennsylvania.
His last name was Ahlin.
I lost track of him after the war,
but he was a real energetic candidate.
He was a sergeant.
I was just a Private first class at that point,
but he managed to get a mail tent up and going,
and we have a picture of that mail tent at the museum,
and in the back, in the shadow underneath,
you can see a shadowy black figure up under there,
and that's me because I helped him get the tent going up,
and he got the tent up and was the only one who got a tent.
We were the only division to get a tent going,
and so we handled the mail
for all the other two divisions on Iwo Jima
and the other units that came in there for the whole battle.
So the 4th Division did get a mail tent going.
I was a part of that, but my job then...
-And you were part of that.
-...began to be more and more to go out on patrols.
I went out on patrols almost every day
for the next 28 days I was on the island.
-Wow.
Now, returning home,
since we're getting a little close to the end of time today,
do you...
I was reading that article about you in the paper
about composing music again
and then playing and having those pieces played
at the National Museum of the Marine Corps
and those pieces being a tribute to,
you know, your fellow soldiers who were,
you know, injured or killed on Iwo Jima.
-Sure. The...
-Can you talk a little bit more about that?
-A lot of Marines had their little habits,
their little hobbies that they did.
A lot of them wrote articles and kept notes about what they did.
Sometimes you were not supposed to,
but a lot of people drew pictures.
A lot of Marines were artists, and they drew pictures of things
that they saw wherever they were.
I had my own little hobby because I was...
I had grown up in South Carolina.
My father was a minister.
I had learned to play piano and organ,
so when I went into the Marine Corps,
the Chaplins discovered this,
and they started using me to play the organ
for a lot of the church services,
which at first was a little bad.
The other Marines would laugh at me
because of the fact that I was going
and playing for church services while they would be out.
They'd be having a beer somewhere,
and I found out real soon, though,
when we got to Hawaii, and especially after Iwo Jima,
that I went to some of the churches,
and you would run into a lot more pretty girls there
than you would at some beer parlor.
So I got used to the idea that it wasn't such a bad thing,
but anyway, that's what I did as a part of my part-time...
I wrote a lot of little music pieces, and then over the years,
as I finished college and majored in music,
and I have several degrees and taught music at college level,
that the music I wrote, I have...
It's my personal thing,
but I have a lot of music that I orchestrated,
and some of it has been performed,
but I've never pushed it.
So that was my hobby, and sometimes now
there are some organizations
who are getting ready and have done some of my music recently.
Well, if they find this interesting,
but realize, please, that it's my own interest,
and I'm not trying to push my music.
[ Chuckles ]
-Well, thank you, and I guess...
I think we are at our at least 1:00 Central Time,
2:00 your time, Eastern,
and I don't want to keep students
and teachers any longer if they're on a schedule.
So, Mr. Matthews,
thank you so much... -Thank you.
I've enjoyed it very much. -...for being with us today
and sharing some of your story.
We have as well, and, Jim,
thank you, as well, for your insight
on the flag raisings, today.
You guys stay warm up there,
and I'm going to actually close out the program today.
I'm going to move into a different area.
You're going to see the room change one more time,
and I want to close out today
with telling you all about our essay contest.
We have an annual essay contest here at the museum every year.
This year, it is about Iwo Jima
and this idea of what makes a hero
based on this flag raising and based on some famous words
by one of the flag raisers, Ira Hayes.
Now, he said, "How could I feel like a hero
when only five men in my platoon of 45 survived,
when only 27 men in my company of 250
managed to escape injury or death on Iwo Jima?"
And we want you all to respond to that question, you know,
"What makes a hero?"
You can find more information about that essay contest
at the link that you see there.
I also want to tell teachers, you can see your WebLinks.
So some of you might have not received teacher guide,
especially if you registered just today.
So you can find all of our educational resources
and, of course, everything that we have to offer on Iwo Jima
and, of course, a link to our wonderful special guest
at the National Museum of the Marine Corps.
What I want to close out with today
is actually one more poll for you students out there,
and then we're going to end it for today.
I'm going to drag it right in from this Q&A area
so you guys can see it,
and it's a very famous quote by Chester Nimitz,
and he said this, what you see on screen.
What do you think this quote means?
"Of the Marines on Iwo Jima,
uncommon valor was a common virtue."
I want you guys to think about that as a class and respond
to what you think that means.
You know, that's one of the most famous quotes from, you know...
There's a lot of famous quotes from World War II,
but that's one of them up there,
and I want you to brainstorm about it as a class
and, you know, what we've learned today.
But from Chrissy here at the National World War II Museum
and thanking...