From a Photo of War, a Statue to Remember

04 July, 2012

The United States Marine Corps War Memorial, better known as the Iwo Jima Memorial, in Arlington, Virginia, on July 4, 2011, as Independence Day fireworks burst over Washington. The Washington Monument and the Capitol are in the distance.

MARIO RITTER: Welcome to the VOA Special English program EXPLORATIONS. I’m Mario Ritter.

July fourth, Independence Day in the United States, is a time of celebration. Friends and family across the country gather for food, music and activities. Fireworks light the night sky. Memories are made.

Photographs preserve our family memories. Sometimes they capture the memories of a nation. This week, Steve Ember and Barbara Klein tell the story of a famous photograph from World War Two. It led the sculptor Felix de Weldon to create one of the largest free-standing bronze statues in the world.

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STEVE EMBER: Our story is about one moment in time. Really, one-four-hundredths of a second. That is the amount of time it took Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal to capture a historic image on film.

​The photograph shows six men and an American flag during a battle in World War Two. Joe Rosenthal took it on February twenty-third, nineteen forty-five, on the Pacific island of Iwo Jima. Japanese forces held the island. American Marines were trying to capture it.