JOE ROSENTHAL IS DEAD

Joe Rosenthal, who won the Pulitzer Prize, took the picture "My Marines", during the II World War, died yesterday, ha was 94 year old.

From The San Francisco Chronicle:

He was a 33-year-old Associated Press photographer on Feb. 23, 1945, when he captured the black-and-white image of five battle-weary Marines and a Navy corpsman struggling to raise a flag atop Mount Suribachi on Iwo Jima.

He took the picture on the fifth day of the 36-day battle that left 6,621 American dead and 19,217 wounded. All but 1,083 of the 22,000 dug-in Japanese defenders were killed before the island was secured.

The picture was used as an inspirational symbol for a War Bond drive in 1945 that raised $26.3 billion.

The flag-raising picture was the model for the gigantic bronze Marine Corps Memorial in Arlington, Va., which stands 110 feet tall from base to flag top and weighs more than 100 tons.


It was that flag-raising, caught at high noon in 1/400 of a second, that electrified the nation and won the Pulitzer Prize for photography in 1945.

Rosenthal made little money from the Iwo Jima picture. He received a $4,200 bonus in war bonds from the AP, a $1,000 photography prize from a camera magazine and about $700 for a couple of radio appearances.

Altogether, Rosenthal reckoned he made less than $10,000 from the picture.