This Day in History: A Humble Hero at Iwo Jima
- tara
- 7 hours ago
- 4 min read
On this day in 1923, a young boy is born in Wisconsin. For decades, John Bradley was believed to be one of the men raising a flag on Iwo Jima in Joe Rosenthal’s iconic Marine photo.
Bradley believed it, too. After all, he did help raise a flag that day.
The photo made Bradley a household name, but perhaps he should be known for his heroism instead. Did you know Bradley earned a Navy Cross for his actions mere days before the famous flag raising?
The young corpsman had landed at Iwo Jima with the 5th Marine Division on February 19, 1945.
“The action was terrific the moment we made the beach,” he later said. “I was watching Clifford R. Langley, PhM3c, in another landing craft. He made the beach just about 10 seconds before I did, but when I touched sand, he was already treating a man.”
The next few days were difficult.
“Progress was slow in the face of fanatical resistance,” Bradley described. “Concealed Japanese positions had to be taken by hand-to-hand combat.”
Just two days later, he was with his Marines when one fell, wounded. The Marine was exposed, with enemy fire falling all around. Bradley ran for the wounded man, only to find that plasma had to be administered immediately or the Marine would not make it.
“Placing himself in a position to shield the wounded man,” his Cross citation explains, “he tied a plasma unit to a rifle planted upright in the sand and continued his life saving mission.”
Only when the Marine had been treated did Bradley pull him to a more sheltered position.
Nevertheless, Bradley is better known for what happened on February 23 when Marines were sent up Mount Suribachi. He soon found himself helping to plant a flag on its summit. Afterward, a second group raised another, larger flag in its place.
Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal happened to be present at this second flag raising. He snapped a shot but had no idea if he’d gotten a good photo. Events were moving too quickly.
Bradley was injured a few weeks later and evacuated to a hospital. Only then did he learn about Rosenthal’s photo. By then, it had taken the world by storm. He was told that he was one of the men pictured.
Perhaps it’s important to remember that, on February 23, Bradley had not eaten or slept in three days. It was chaotic. He knew he’d raised a flag, but that might have been it.
“What picture?” he joked. “I didn’t know he’d taken our picture. . . . I was too busy and too damned grateful for having gotten up that rock alive.”
Indeed, it seems that Bradley didn’t want to be famous. When he got home, he tried to avoid fanfare. He even disembarked from a train early and walked into his hometown, hoping to avoid a “welcome home” parade.
For decades, he avoided talking about Iwo Jima, whenever he could.
“He only talked about it once,” his wife smiled. “On our first date. For seven or eight disinterested minutes. Then never again in a 47-year marriage did he say the words ‘Iwo Jima.’”
Bradley did his best to return to normal life, but the war never really left him. To the contrary, his wife remembered him having nightmares. “He’d be sleeping, his eyes closed. But he’d be whimpering,” she remembered.
The famous flag-raising photo was nowhere to be found in his home or office. He never even told his family that he’d earned a Navy Cross. They learned of it after his passing in 1994.
Roughly two decades later, his family also learned that Bradley had never been in Rosenthal’s famous photo after all.
But his son mostly remembered how humble his dad was.
“People refer to us as heroes,” Bradley concluded in a rare interview. “I personally don’t look at it that way. I just think that I happened to be at a certain place at a certain time.”
Primary Sources:
Colin Dwyer, Marines Confirm Decades-Old Case Of Mistaken Identity In Iwo Jima Photo (NPR; June 23, 2016)
Cpl. Robert Carlson, Walking in the Steps of Courage (Marines; June 1998) (Vol. 27)
Dave Zweifel, ‘Flags’ is More than Great War Story (Capital Times; July 7, 2000) (p. 7A)
Flags Not of Our Fathers? (Naval History Mag.; August 2016)
James Bradley, My Father, My Hero (Corpus Christi Caller-Times; June 17, 2001) (p. A11)
John Bradley, Oral History- Iwo Jima Flag Raising (Naval History and Heritage Command)
Luis Martinez, ‘Flags of Our Fathers’ Author Convinced His Father Was Not in Iconic Iwo Jima Photo (ABC News; May 3, 2016)
Meg Jones, Son of Navy corpsman casts doubt on Iwo Jima photo (NBC News; May 4, 2016)
Navy Cross citation (John Bradley; WWII) (reprinted HERE)
Pharmacist’s Mate Second Class John Henry Bradley, USN (Deceased) (U.S. Marine Corps website)
The Hospital Corpsman in World War II's Most Famous Image (Navy Medicine; Nov.-Dec. 1997) (Vol. 88)