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| Photo By: Office of U.S. Marine Corps Communication, Headquarters Marine Corps |
One of the officers in Joe Rosenthal’s iconic ‘Rasing the Flag on Iwo Jima’ has been mis-identified for over 70 years, according to a statement by the U.S. Marine Corps. The man (highlighted in the image above) was previously believed to be John Bradley, but a review panel considering ‘all available images, film, statements and previous investigations’ found the man to be Private First Class Harold Schultz.
How did this case of mistaken identity come about? According to his son James, John Bradley remembered raising a flag on Mount Suribachi, and was later told as he lay recovering in a hospital bed that he was one of the men in the photo. He was believed to be the sixth man in the Pulitzer Prize winning photo for more than 70 years.
When a Smithsonian Channel research team approached the Marine Corps with a theory that Bradley was not the man in the photo, an investigation was launched. A panel led by retired general officer Jan Huly started looking over evidence in April, and released its findings late last week.
Articles: Digital Photography Review (dpreview.com)