San Francisco Names a Street For the Photographer Who Captured Marines Raising an American Flag at Iwo Jima

In early 1945, the Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal captured an iconic shot of troops raising an American flag on the Japanese island of Iwo Jima. It became one of the most famous images from World War II, and it won the Pulitzer Prize for photography later that year.

“Sure, I took the photo,” Rosenthal said when complimented on his winning image, per the AP’s Janie Har and Terry Chea. “But the Marines took Iwo Jima.”

This month, Rosenthal, who died in 2006, is being honored in San Francisco, where he lived for most of his life: Officials have renamed a downtown block of Sutter Street “Joe Rosenthal Way.” As speakers emphasized at the recent renaming ceremony, Rosenthal’s contribution to World War II photography was the highlight of a long career mostly spent covering local events for the San Francisco Chronicle.

The Bay Area city—home to pivotal Navy shipyards during the ’40s—is a fitting location to honor a World War II photographer, as Aaron Peskin, leader of the city’s Board of Supervisors, tells Ryan Curry of KCRA, a local news channel. “San Francisco’s modern history is inextricably linked to World War II,” he says. “It’s U.S. history, and [Rosenthal] is a son of San Francisco.”

Born in Washington, D.C. in 1911, Rosenthal moved to San Francisco just after graduating high school. He became a newspaper photographer in the early ’30s and joined the AP in 1941. When he became an AP war correspondent in 1944, he was sent to the Pacific Theater.

Rosenthal captured many U.S. assaults, including Guam, Angaur and Peleliu. But he didn’t take his celebrated photo until Iwo Jima, where U.S. Marines invaded on February 19, 1945. Some 22,000 Japanese soldiers died in the ensuing 36-day battle, and roughly 24,000 American soldiers were killed or injured—the highest number of single-action casualties in Marine Corps history.

USA: IWO JIMA PHOTOGRAPHER - JOE ROSENTHAL

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“No man who survived the beach can tell you how he did it,” Rosenthal later said, per the Chronicle’s Peter Hartlau. “It was like walking through rain and not getting wet.”

On the Battle of Iwo Jima’s fifth day—February 23—Rosenthal observed two Marines attempting to place a 150-pound flagpole atop Mount Suribachi. Other soldiers arrived to help, working in tandem to hoist the flag, and Rosenthal snapped a photo.

His image became a poster advertising war bonds, which citizens could purchase to fund the military, and the ad helped raise $26 billion in 1945, per the AP. After the war, Rosenthal returned to the Bay Area, and he spent more than three decades taking photos for the Chronicle before retiring in 1981.

As Rosenthal’s daughter Anne tells KCRA, her father “fell in love” with San Francisco’s beauty and people. She says she feels “very honored” about the renaming of Sutter Street, adding: “Of course, [I] wish my dad were here to see this.”

In Rosenthal’s post-war decades with the Chronicle, he captured pro baseball player Willie Mays, Senator Dianne Feinstein, children running out of their last day of school in 1965 and countless other moments and figures.

“He had this 50-year career—35 with the Chronicle—and he was known for one photograph,” Tom Graves, chapter historian for the U.S. Marine Corps Combat Correspondents Association, tells the Chronicle. “From kindergarten to parades to professional and amateur sports games, he was the hometown photographer. I think that’s something that San Francisco should recognize and cherish.”

Sonja Anderson | READ MORE

Sonja Anderson is a writer and reporter based in New York City.