1. Joseph John Rosenthal was an American photographer who received the Pulitzer Prize for his iconic World War II photograph Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima, taken during the 1945 Battle of Iwo Jima.
16 Facts About Joe Rosenthal
1. 2.
Joe Rosenthal's picture became one of the best-known photographs of the war, and was replicated as the United States Marine Corps War Memorial in Arlington County, Virginia.
3.
Joseph Joe Rosenthal was born on October 9,1911, in Washington, DC His parents were Russian-Jewish immigrants.
4.
Joe Rosenthal graduated from McKinley High School in 1929, and after working as an office boy, he moved to San Francisco where he became a reporter-photographer for The San Francisco News in 1932.
5.
Joe Rosenthal attended University of San Francisco in 1943 and converted to Catholicism while in attendance there.
6.
Joe Rosenthal was rejected by the US Army as a photographer because of poor eyesight.
7.
On Friday morning, February 23,1945, four days after the Marines landed at Iwo Jima, Joe Rosenthal was making his daily visit to the island on a Marine landing craft when he heard that an American flag was being raised atop Mount Suribachi, a volcano at the southern tip of the island.
8.
Lowery told them the view was good from the summit, and Joe Rosenthal convinced Genaust and Campbell to continue to take him to the top with them since they were armed.
9.
Joe Rosenthal swung his camera around toward the action and pushed the shutter.
10.
When that was done, Joe Rosenthal gathered a group of sixteen Marines and two Navy corpsmen around the base of the flagstaff for a posed shot which included First Lieutenant Harold Schrier, the only officer on the summit, who had volunteered to take the 40-man patrol up Mount Suribachi that morning to seize and occupy the crest and raise the battalion's flag.
11.
Joe Rosenthal worked there as a photographer for 35 years, before retiring in 1981.
12.
Joe Rosenthal's name was inscribed on the bottom right side of the front of the Marine Corps War Memorial in 1982.
13.
On February 23,1945, a bespectacled Mr Joe Rosenthal made a picture of five US Marines and one US Navy corpsman that immortalized the American Fighting spirit during World War II and became an everlasting symbol of service and sacrifice, transcending art and the ages.
14.
Joe Rosenthal bravely accompanied island-hopping forces in the Pacific as a civilian news photographer.
15.
In recognition of his own service and dedication, Mr Joe Rosenthal is posthumously awarded the Department of the Navy Distinguished Public Service Award.
16.
Joe Rosenthal was portrayed by actor Ned Eisenberg in the film.