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fontman
07-21-06, 07:18 AM
Tahoe man to be honored: Raymond Jacobs was present at Iwo Jima flag raising
Staff and wire reports
July 21, 2006

Raymond Jacobs revealed last year what he remembers about the famous iconic photograph showing Old Glory being raised by six men atop Mount Suribachi.

There were actually two flags and two separate photo shoots, the South Lake Tahoe man told an Associated Press reporter last year, in a story marking the 60th anniversary of the famous picture.

The first photograph was taken as a small flag was being raised improvisationally, he said. There were cheers among the soldiers - including Jacobs, who was a young radioman - as the flag went up.

A couple hours later, though, another and much bigger American flag was raised at the same spot among another group of men while the smaller one simultaneously came down.

The photograph that has become known around the world as a moment of American victory was not exactly 100 percent true to the moment it happened, Jacobs has claimed.

Since the February 2005 revelation, Jacobs' story has gained steam, hitting newspapers across the country. This spring the retired journalist wrote about what happened for the Marine Corps Gazette, the official magazine for the U.S. Marine Corps.

This month Jacobs got some more good news, which will further add traction to his claims that he was among the six men who initially raised a much smaller American flag to cheering soldiers, and that the famous photograph was engineered later - it is theorized - so that the flag would appear to be much bigger.

In a November ceremony, Jacobs and 13 other men involved in raising both flags will be honored at the Marine Corps Museum outside Washington, D.C. In their honor, a painting of the famous scenes will be unveiled, with each of the survivors signing their names to it.

"It's a real honor and breakthrough to be asked" Jacobs, 80, said.

Other veterans who have supported Jacob's claims say they're pleased that his story has begun to set the record straight on what really happened that Feb. 23, 1945 day.

"In the Bible you have the Apostles. In the Marine Corps you have these guys at Iwo Jima. They are the Marine Corps' Apostles," said Richard W. Buchanan, a Placerville veteran of the Vietnam War and fundraiser for a veterans memorial there.

Jacobs' story begins Feb. 19, 1945, when he and thousands of Marines were pinned down on the black sand beach as bullets, mortars and artillery rained down from an invisible enemy burrowed in the island.

Iwo Jima would be the deadliest battle in Marine Corps history, killing nearly 7,000 Americans. On the morning of Feb. 23, after a four-man reconnaissance patrol returned from the 550-foot summit of Suribachi, Jacobs, a member of Fox Company, 2nd Battalion, 28th Marines, says he was ordered to fill in for Easy Company's radioman on a combat patrol up the mountain.

With a 40-pound radio strapped to his back and carrying an M-1 rifle, Jacobs says he made a nerve-racking scramble up the rugged peak with 40 strangers.

After making it to the summit without resistance, a group of the men tied a small flag to a length of water pipe found in the debris and hoisted it. When it was aloft, a spontaneous roar rose from the shore.

"All of a sudden you could hear voices down below screaming and yelling and cheering," Jacobs told the Associated Press. "It was an incredible feeling, a very emotional feeling. The boats who were beached and the big ships at sea started blowing whistles and horns and all the rest of it. The flag going up indicated to them that this monster observation post for the enemy was now under our control."

Lou Lowery, a photographer for Leatherneck magazine, captured the moment from several vantage points. But those photos were not published for two years. That piece of history was shelved when a second patrol planted a replacement flag.

The reason for the swap is not clear. Some suggest the first flag was taken as a souvenir, others said it was too small.

For whatever reason, a larger flag was run up the hill, and Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal forever defined the moment as his shutter caught five Marines and a Navy corpsman pushing the second flagpole skyward.

Jacobs says he was off the mountain when the second flag went up but spoke with reporters after the first flag-raising. The Feb. 24 front page of the now-defunct Los Angeles Herald-Express, one of his hometown papers, says: "Pfc. Raymond E. Jacobs of the Twenty-eighth Marines was revealed in an Associated Press dispatch today as being a member of the patrol of 14 leathernecks who proudly raised the flag on rugged Mount Suribachi, on the southern tip of Iwo Jima yesterday." The Los Angeles Times incorrectly put Jacobs' name in the caption of the Rosenthal photo on its front page the following day.

A letter Jacobs wrote home, dated Feb. 25, uses the Japanese name for the volcano, but confuses either the day of the event or the date of writing: "We took Mt. Suribachiyama yesterday and ran up a flag. It really looks nice up there."

Jacobs endured the horror of the battle for another two weeks until he was hit with shrapnel from a Japanese mortar on March 10 and evacuated with wounds that earned him a Purple Heart.

Jacobs only became aware of the Rosenthal photo after returning home - and he was puzzled at first because it didn't depict what he witnessed.

It was not until 1947, after the war, that Lowery's picture of the first flag-raising was published in Leatherneck. In response to an inquiry from Jacobs, Lowery wrote that his story had been kept secret because Rosenthal's shot provided good publicity for the Marines.

President Franklin Roosevelt ordered three men in the Rosenthal photo to return home, where they promoted war bonds. Over the years, many others claimed they were there.

But Jacobs says he was not a glory seeker. "The flag-raising and the patrol became just another event," Jacobs told the Associated Press last year. "We didn't see it as a defining moment in our lives. It was just something we had done and we were happy about it."

Jacobs also points to the 1947 letter from photographer Lowery as marking his earliest effort for recognition.

Twenty one ago, Jacobs' daughter, Nancy, took up her father's cause and she's made several inquiries over the years, but has always been met with polite rejection. Members of Congress who have written on his behalf have been told that while as many as 10 Marines are pictured near the flagpole, only six have been identified as flag-raisers. Jacobs says only that he was at the raising.

After retiring in 1992 from KTVU-TV in Oakland, where he worked 34 years as reporter, anchor, and news director, Jacobs began more thorough research. His effort took a leap forward when Leatherneck ran more of Lowery's photos a few years ago, revealing the shadowy face of the radioman who was out of view in the original photo. Jacobs said he recognized himself immediately.

Forensic photographic expert James Ebert compared pictures of Jacobs with the Lowery photos and found his claim convincing. While Ebert couldn't decipher the name on a canteen cover, he concluded: "The radioman shown in the Lowery photos taken on Mount Suribachi is Ray Jacobs."

Others have recently lent their support.

Parker Albee Jr., a history professor at the University of Southern Maine and co-author of "Shadow of Suribachi: Raising the Flags on Iwo Jima," plans to identify Jacobs as the radioman in an upcoming paperback edition.

James Bradley, son of John Bradley, the corpsman celebrated for raising the second flag, says he can't prove Jacobs was the man in the Lowery photos, but he thinks he was there. Bradley, author of the best-selling "Flags of Our Fathers," put a link to the Jacobs controversy on his Web site.

- Tribune City Editor Jeff Munson and Associated Press Writer Brian Melley contributed to this report