But not so.
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Minnesotan Charles Lindberg, who's not related to the famous aviator, was one of six Marines who reached the top of Mount Suribachi and raised the first flag that day. We visited him at his home in Richfield. He says Iwo Jima was bombed for 72 days before the Marines arrived, and he thought the battle would be a cinch.
"We hit that beach that morning -- the 19th of February -- and boy did we get a surprise. They mortared us up and down the beach -- they had it all synchronized -- they could walk 'em right up and down the beach. I found out later their plan was to put us on the beach and annihilate us," he said.
Many Marines died on the beach. But Lindberg made it off and pushed toward Mount Suribachi, the highest point on the island. He was a flamethrower. He carried 5 gallons of jellied gasoline on his back, and shot fire into tunnels where the Japanese were hiding. After several days of fighting and thousands of casualties, the Marines reached the base of the mountain.
"And then they came and said, 'you're going to start climbing in the morning.' That's kind of a jittery night we had. Next morning, we reported to Col. Chandler Johnson, the battalion commander. He handed Lt. Schrier a flag, and said, 'if you get to the top, raise it.'
The Marines made it to the top. And the first thing Lindberg and five others did was put up the flag.
"Two of our men found a great big long pole up there, about 20-feet long. We tied the flag to it, carried it to the highest spot we could find, and raised it. Boy, then the island came alive down below. The troops started to cheer, the ships' whistles went off, it was quite a proud moment," he says.
A man named Lou Lowery photographed that moment, but chances are, you haven't heard of him. That's because he didn't take the famous flag-raising picture. Lowrey's photo is of six men standing by a flag that's already up; he ran out of film right before it was raised.
Meanwhile, a commander down below was getting nervous about the safety of the flag. He sent up a replacement -- a much bigger one this time.
"It was four hours after ours that they raised that second flag. That was put up there to preserve our flag. They just put that in place of it because they were afraid somebody was going to steal that flag," Lindberg says.
Joe Rosenthal took the second picture. His film was flown off the island, and was on the front pages of U.S. papers within a week.
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http://news.minnesota.publicradio.org/features/2005/02/18_wurzerc_photo/pnorman