On todays date, 23 February 1945, a group of US Marines and a Navy Corpsman raised the American Flag on the top of Mount Suribachi, during the battle of Iwo Jima.
As the flag went up, Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal had just landed on the beach at the foot of Mount Suribachi and decided that he wanted the flag as a souvenir. Popular legend has it that Colonel Johnson wanted the flag for himself, but, in fact, he believed that the flag belonged to the 2nd Battalion 28th Marines, who had captured that section of the island. Johnson sent Sergeant Mike Strank to take a second (larger) flag up the volcano to replace the first. As the first flag came down, the second went up. It was after the second flag went up that Rosenthal took the famous photograph “Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima” of the replacement flag being planted on the mountain’s summit.
