FLAG OF OUR FATHERS

Marines: 2 Men Misidentified as Having Raised 1st Iwo Jima Flag

Admits to wrongly naming two enlistees as having been there.

The U.S. Marine Corps officially acknowledged this week that they had previously mistaken the identity of two people raising the first flag at Iwo Jima during World War II. According to the statement, two men long thought to have participated in the iconic Feb. 23, 1945, flag-raising were in fact nearby but did not actually help hoist the flag. Contrary to previous belief, Pfc. Louis C. Charlo and Pfc. James R. Michels were not among the men who raised that first flag—although both were involved in the mission to scale the 554-foot-tall Mount Suribachi. The first flag gained considerably less attention than the second, larger flag-raising ceremony, which was famously photographed by the Associated Press and depicted by a monument near Washington, D.C.