Joe Rosenthal

I guess because the 65th anniversary of the invasion of Iwo Jima is this month, Joe Rosenthal came across my mind. Rosenthal, of course, was the photographer who took the picture of flag raising on Iwo. Rosenthal traveled to Iwo on board our ship, US Pickens, APA 190, and the first pictures he sent back to the states showed one of our boats landing marines. Although he traveled on our ship, I never met him. I did see the flag raising, two of them. My job was a radarman but during the landing of troops I manned a phone at a debarkation station. We watched in binoculars and saw the flag go up on Mt. Suribachi, then come down. We later knew, of course, that the second flag raising picture was the one that became famous. Rosenthal was a working photographer who never got real fame and certainly not wealth from the picture. He died at 94.