Raising The Flag on Iwo Jima

Rene Gagnon

Rene Gagnon, was a very different man to both Ira Hayes and John Bradley. He was an extrovert who had only joined the flag raising at the very last moment. Even so, he was determined to make the most of his good fortune. He enjoyed the limelight and the cheers of the crowd and took to his new-found celebrity status like a duck to water. He looked to cash-in while he could. Any number of job offers came in but he couldn’t accept them for he was still a serving soldier, and finding girls to sleep with was no problem at all. Despite all his best endeavours, however, he made very little money. As the immediate post-war years passed he became a forgotten man. All the promises of job offers made at the height of his fame were reneged upon, and he ended up working in a series of menial jobs most of which he was fired from. He was working as a janitor at the time of his death on 12 October, 1979, aged 54. He died a bitter and frustrated alcoholic who hated everything to do with the flag raising.

John Bradley

John Bradley, was a quiet and reserved man who maintained a level head throughout. He saw what he was doing as his duty and no more. Soon after the war he married his childhood sweetheart with whom he had 8 children. He later went on to become a successful businessman. He rarely spoke about about his wartime experiences maintaining a quiet dignity. It was likely though that he was suffering from post-traumatic stress. He frequently had nightmares and was haunted by the death of his friend Ralph Ignatowski, who was captured and tortured to death by the Japanese. He found it difficult to reconcile himself to the fact that he had not been there for his friend. In later life he declined all requests to talk about the raising of the flag. He once said that the real heroes had been the ones who had died on Iwo Jima. He died of a heart attack on 11 January, 1994, aged 70. The last of the flag raisers in that most iconic of photographs to die.