The expectation of a triumphant flag planting was so well-ingrained by February 1945 that Dorman Smith’s syndicated editorial cartoon, appearing in newspapers across the country just a few days before Rosenthal’s photograph, depicted a pair of hands jamming an American flag into a rock labeled “Iwo Jima.” The newsreels that millions of American moviegoers watched each week also used footage of flag-raisings to punctuate their reports (for example, those depicting the U.S. Such flag-raising images routinely appeared in newspaper coverage of island battles such as Tarawa, Guam and Leyte. Finally, the American triumph would be signaled by a photo of Old Glory raised in victory. Then, newspapers would publish photos of troops fighting their way past the beaches. First, there would be images of preparations for the invasion (warplanes dropping bombs, ships approaching the island). In fact, the government would soon be forced to correct the false impression that the visual coverage of the battles in the Pacific had conveyed.īy 1944, American forces had driven the Japanese from several islands, and news reports from the theater had developed a predictable sequence. But, not long after Rosenthal’s famous photo appeared-roughly six months before the war in the Pacific would actually end-there were signs that such images were no longer having that effect. At first, these images raised the home front’s hopes for a relatively speedy end to the war.
PHOTOTIME NYC SERIES
Rosenthal’s photo represented the climax of a long series of triumphant flag-raising images in American news coverage of the Pacific theater of World War II.
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