I had the opportunity to preview Clint Eastwood's latest directorial effort in Paramount Pictures' Screening Room here in Manhattan. It is truly a masterful work. The characters and story are part of my own life. The movie took me back 60-plus years and is so powerful I found myself reaching for a handkerchief at the end. It is difficult to portray this kind of history accurately in a movie and still end up with a seat-gripping drama. Usually, the truth gives way. In this case, the truth wins out.
Flags of Our Fathers is part of the story of one of the most brutal amphibious assaults of all time. It focuses on the Battle of Iwo Jima and the two flag raisings on Mount Suribachi. Joe Rosenthal's Pulitzer Prize-winning image of raising flag number two has become a part of our national identity.
The movie title is taken from a best-selling book by the same name, written by James Bradley, son of one of the flag raisers in Rosenthal's famous picture. As in the book, the movie searches for the truth regarding the identity of the flag raisers and what this iconic event did to the lives of the young men who were captured in this classic war photo. The flag raisings were but a moment or two in a 36-day battle, one that lasted a full month after these two events took place.
The film focuses on the events that led up to the Mount Suribachi flag raisings, especially the second one. The three surviving flag raisers were: Doc Bradley, the calm, steady corpsman played by Ryan Phillippe; Rene Gagnon, the photogenic young New Englander played by Jesse Bradford; and Ira Hayes, the honest, thoughtful, soft-spoken Pima Native American who shied away from being called a hero and didn't ask to have his picture taken. Of the three, Hayes, played skillfully by Adam Beach, truly never recovered from the scars of battle and the constant spotlight he had to endure.
The Marine escort for the War Bond drive was Keyes Beech, a uniformed combat correspondent played by John Benjamin Hickey. Beech later won a Pulitzer Prize for his combat reporting of the Korean War.
The casting in this film is startlingly accurate. I knew the actual men portrayed, and when they appeared on screen for the first time, I knew exactly who they were. Hayes, Gagnon, and Franklin Sousley (another of the flag raisers) are so realistically portrayed that, for a moment, I thought I was in a time warp. The movie took me back to a night at our camp on the slopes of Mauna Kea, Hawaii, in late April 1945.
I was at work planning Operation Olympic, the upcoming invasion of Japan, in Combat Team 28's top-secret operations shack, which was surrounded by heavy barbed wire and guarded by two sentries. We had just returned from Iwo and had been asked to identify the surviving Marines in Rosenthal's photo so they could be returned to the United States to lead the Seventh War Bond Drive.
Only one face, Corpsman Bradley's, was partially visible in the photo. He was hospitalized with wounds suffered in the battle, but he was near recovery, and we knew he was one of the men in the photo. When word passed down the ranks that a trip stateside was in the offing for the survivors, Gagnon identified himself to his seniors. But Hayes, a very private person, did not.
A sentry told me that three Marines wanted to talk with an officer about the flag raisings. I passed them in. They were First Sergeant John Daskalakis of Easy Company, 2d Battalion, with Gagnon and Hayes of the same battalion.
"Dask," as we called him, said that Gagnon and Hayes had identified themselves as being in the photo. Hayes reluctantly nodded in agreement. They also said that Mike Strank and Sousley, both killed in action (KIA), were in the photo. Gagnon then added that he thought Hank Hansen, also KIA, was in the photo. (It was later determined that Harlan Block, not Hansen, was the Marine planting the staff into the ground.) Hayes said nothing. I informed our commanding officer, Colonel Harry "The Horse" Liversedge, and our executive officer, Lieutenant Colonel Robert Williams, that Gagnon and Hayes were on their way to join Bradley in the United States.
This movie has several remarkable aspects. The location chosen, Iceland, is excellent and stands in as the southern end of Iwo Jima in a very realistic way. The uniforms, ships, landing craft, and weaponry are also true to the types used in the invasion.
Combat action is brutally realistic. One scene shows the severed and blood-drenched head of a Marine. While it may be too much for some moviegoers, it is an accurate depiction of what went on daily at Iwo. It made me recall a Marine's lower leg, complete with field shoe, legging, and ripped dungaree trouser, that plopped into the black sand two or three meters from a shallow, scooped-out foxhole I was sharing with our clerk/runner, Len Bulkowski, at about H+120 minutes.
Bulkowski asked, "Cap'n what should I do with this?" I remember saying, "Just take it over to the aid station. Maybe Doc McCarthy [our regimental surgeon] can match it up with one of our casualties." Unfortunately, McCarthy was himself killed by a heavy mortar barrage that hit us early the next morning.
On the morning of 23 February 1945, at about 1020, a small American flag was raised. The first flag raising included Hank Hansen, Boots Thomas, the same John Bradley, Phil Ward, Chuck Lindberg, and Jim Michaels, with radio operator Ray Jacobs and patrol leader Lieutenant H. George Shrier overseeing the event. Lew Lowery of Leatherneck magazine captured it all in a photo series.
The entire invasion force, the Fleet, the Marines, and others involved in the battle saw the flag or heard that Mount Suribachi had been conquered. A roar went up. One could hear shouts of approval, guns booming in the Fleet, as well as whistles blaring on the ships. It was a huge morale booster for the entire force.
The movie shows Secretary of the Navy James Forrestal coming ashore and stating that he would like to have the flag. Chandler Johnson, commander of the 2d Battalion, 28th Marines, from whose ranks the flag raisers had come, said he wanted the flag because it belonged to the men of his battalion. As a result, Lieutenant Ted Tuttle was sent to find a larger flag from one of the LSTs that was beached. Tuttle, in luck, found a larger flag, and Johnson sent Gagnon to the top with it. (Both flags now reside in the new National Museum of the Marine Corps at Quantico.)
Rosenthal's photo, reproduced many thousands of times the world over, depicts the second flag raising on Iwo, which went virtually unnoticed by those present, except by Rosenthal and Bill Genaust, who shot a 16-millimeter movie from the same angle. But it was this image that became a huge morale booster for war-weary America. The movie is true to the story of the survivors of Rosenthal's photo and their postwar years.
Ira Hayes' life, in particular, is a heart-rending tragedy. In 1970, as a brigadier general, I was the escort officer for his mother and father when they came to visit their son's gravesite in Arlington Cemetery for the last time. The chief of the Pima reservation had come with them, and an official car drove us up. The four of us got out, stood in front of the grave, and bowed our heads. I said a brief prayer with them, and that was the end of the service. We then drove back to the Bureau of Indian Affairs.
Like Ira, his mother and father were reserved and spoke very little. The Pima Indian reservation in those days was the poorest of them all. A local Arizona radio station had paid for the trip and their brand-new, store-bought clothes with tags still attached.
Gagnon's celebrity, as well as Hayes', quickly faded after the war, and they spent the rest of their lives doing menial jobs. Corpsman Bradley seemed to lead a full life, but only by blocking out the memories of Iwo Jima and the flag raising.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt died in April 1945, not long after he had ordered the flag raisers to be identified and sent back to the States. His successor, Harry S. Truman, greeted the three at the White House and challenged them to raise 14 billion dollars in the bond drive. My recollection is that they raised at least 20 billion.
The movie Flags of Our Fathers rates four stars and a number of Oscars!
Major General Haynes was a captain in the regiment that seized Mount Suribachi and raised the American flag there on 23 February 1945. In Korea, he was executive officer of the 2d Battalion, 1st Marines. In Vietnam, he commanded the 5th Marine Regiment and was G-3 of the 3d Marine Amphibious Force. General Haynes is chairman of the Combat Veterans of Iwo Jima, chairman emeritus of the American Turkish Council, and a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. He lives in New York City, where he is currently at work on a book about Combat Team 28 and the Battle of Iwo Jima.