AP photographer Joe Rosenthal didn’t get the names of the guys who re-enacted the raising of the American flag on Iwo Jima in 1945. There was a war going on and some of the men pictured were dead not long after he took the photograph.
It was left to the ages to figure out and, for the most part, the ages did a pretty good job crediting John Bradley, Rene Gagnon, Ira Hayes, Harlon Block, Michael Strank and Franklin Sousley for their display that buoyed a nation that was sick of the war and its thousands of casualties.
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