thedrifter
03-22-08, 04:56 AM
March 21, 2008
S.D. native finally gets his due
Book helps bring 'unknown' Marine's family secret to light
Steve Young
syoung@argusleader.com
In the photograph, he is smiling, his cap thrust high in the air, his fellow Marines rejoicing beside him as they pose beneath an American flag.
Minutes earlier, that same flag was immortalized by Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal when he snapped the transcendent image of World War II - five Marines and a Navy corpsman raising the Stars and Stripes above Mount Suribachi on Iwo Jima. It was Feb. 23, 1945.
At the time, battle-weary Marines wept at the sight. Hundreds of ships in the fleet that observed the flag saluted it with salvoes. And Rosenthal's lens captured a second image - 18 Marines jubilant before the first foreign flag to fly over Japanese territorial soil in 4,000 years.
In time, all 18 would be identified except for the one man standing at the far left, the one smiling, his cap held high. For him, the caption beneath always read "unknown."
But not any more. It turns out he was a 19-year-old South Dakota farm boy from Mitchell named Jack Ryland Thurman.
The discovery was made after James Bradley's book, "Flags of Our Fathers," was published in 2000. Thurman's relatives began telling others they knew who was in the photo.
Moments before the photo was made, "they had asked for volunteers from the 27th Regiment of the Marine Corps' 5th Division to help the 28th Regiment secure the mountain," Thurman, 82, recalled from his home in Boulder, Colo.
"I was standing down alongside the mountain, watching them gather for a picture," he said. "A guy called out, 'Hey, get up here.' I said I was with the 27th Regiment. He said, 'Makes no difference. You're one of us.' "
In that instant, Thurman became part of what would be known as the "Gung Ho" photograph. It is a famous shot for the moment in World War II that it represents. But it developed a bit of infamy as well when, days after the events on Mount Suribachi, Rosenthal was asked if he had staged his famous photograph.
Not even aware that his flag-raising photograph had come out and was being hailed around the world, Rosenthal thought they were talking about the "Gung Ho" photograph and confirmed that it was staged. Turned out they actually were referring to the flag-raising photo. Thus Rosenthal found himself battling the last 60 years of his life trying to correct the misconception, said Dan Crawford of the Marines Corps' History Division in Quantico, Va.
Begged to enlist
For Thurman, that single frozen frame of joy falls far short of defining his war experience.
In 1942, the oldest of Jack and Lorraine Thurman's 15 children was begging his father to sign the paperwork for him to enlist. The elder Thurman insisted he needed his 17-year-old son to help out on the family's dairy farm. So young Jack Thurman waited until his 18th birthday - Sept. 27, 1943 - then walked into the recruiter's office in Mitchell.
Seventeen months later, he was storming the beaches at Iwo Jima.
That volcanic island 650 miles south of Tokyo had three airstrips used by the Japanese. Capturing the island was crucial to the Americans for staging an invasion of mainland Japan.
By the time Thurman hit the southern beach, U.S. forces already had softened up the Japanese with B-29 bombing runs and naval bombardments. He scrambled over and around dozens of Japanese soldiers lying dead on the black volcanic sands.
"It was terrible," he said. "Their stomachs were bloated, and some stomachs had broken open. The smell was just horrific."
American forces landed Feb. 19. Four days later, Thurman was fighting in the middle of an airstrip when he looked over his right shoulder and saw the flag going up on 546-foot-high Mount Suribachi.
Tears filled his eyes.
"We'd lost a lot of men between the 19th of February and the 23rd," he explained. "So we weren't ashamed to shed a tear."
Marines' sacrifices
Iwo Jima proved to be the costliest battle in Marine Corps history. Its toll of 6,821 Americans dead, 5,931 of them Marines, accounted for almost one-third of all Marine Corps losses in World War II. Of the six men pictured raising the flag Feb. 23, three of them - Michael Strank, Franklin Sousley and Harlon Block - were dead before the battle ended.
For Japan, it was no better. Of 21,000 soldiers present at the beginning of the fighting, more than 20,000 were killed and only 216 taken prisoner.
"After the war," Thurman said, "I dealt with a lot of sad memories."
But he moved on with his life, got into architectural work and eventually settled in Boulder, where he helped design buildings on the University of Colorado campus.
Family members knew of the picture, knew he was the smiling Marine with his cap in the air. What they never realized was that the image hung in museums and sat in books with a caption beneath it that identified everyone but the unknown serviceman at the left.
Apparently, members of the 28th Regiment had provided identifications for the photo at some point. Because Thurman came late to the photo as a volunteer from the 27th Regiment, no one had his name. And the Marines made no effort to identify him.
"The Marine Corps takes the position that all Marines on Iwo Jima were heroes," Crawford said. "The attempt to identify every Marine in every picture, while it's of interest to everyone, if it's not in the official records, we don't identify them.
"We're not in a position to say 60 years later that this is this Marine or that Marine. It just upsets families and people who thought it was their next of kin, and it's not."
Telling his story
But Thurman's family had no doubt. When "Flags of Our Fathers" came out in 2000, renewing interest in Iwo Jima, they knew the Marine in the book's "Gung Ho" photograph was not unknown.
As word got out about Thurman's role in the photo, his fame rose, particularly in the Boulder area. He's been invited to speak in a number of venues, from Kiwanis clubs in Colorado to the Officers' Club on Okinawa. He tells the story of a young Marine who approached him after his talk in Okinawa and wanted to know whether military training really prepared a person for actual duty.
"That really caught me," Thurman said. "I told him, 'No. Your body is strong, and you're taught to overtake any kind of terrain, any kind of pillbox. But your mind ... is not ready to see what it's looking at on the ground before you.' "
After that, he decided to write a book about his experiences on Iwo Jima. He and his daughter, 44-year-old Navy Cmdr. Karen Thurman, are finishing it up.
In it, he talks about standing behind Ira Hayes in the photograph. Hayes, a Pima Indian, was one of the six men immortalized in the flag-raising photo.
"He was standing in front of me in the picture," Thurman said. "He said, 'Here, I'll kneel down so they'll be able to see you.' "
Hayes, tormented by the fame he received but did not want, would die 10 years later from alcoholism.
Thurman's book will recount many other memories, too, from the constant smell of sulphur on the volcanic island to the scent of death. It is a story worth preserving, Karen Thurman said, about a Marine of whom she and the rest of her family are very proud.
To that end, she said she is going to work to get her father's name placed in that photo caption. She's already honored him by following him into military service. She requested that her first duty station be Camp Pendleton in California because that was his last stop before he left the Marines.
"I wanted that connection just to be able to pick up where he left off, for him and for his buddies who died beside him," she said. "That photo, and everything my father did, is the reason I'm in the military."
Reach reporter Steve Young at 331-2306.
Ellie
S.D. native finally gets his due
Book helps bring 'unknown' Marine's family secret to light
Steve Young
syoung@argusleader.com
In the photograph, he is smiling, his cap thrust high in the air, his fellow Marines rejoicing beside him as they pose beneath an American flag.
Minutes earlier, that same flag was immortalized by Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal when he snapped the transcendent image of World War II - five Marines and a Navy corpsman raising the Stars and Stripes above Mount Suribachi on Iwo Jima. It was Feb. 23, 1945.
At the time, battle-weary Marines wept at the sight. Hundreds of ships in the fleet that observed the flag saluted it with salvoes. And Rosenthal's lens captured a second image - 18 Marines jubilant before the first foreign flag to fly over Japanese territorial soil in 4,000 years.
In time, all 18 would be identified except for the one man standing at the far left, the one smiling, his cap held high. For him, the caption beneath always read "unknown."
But not any more. It turns out he was a 19-year-old South Dakota farm boy from Mitchell named Jack Ryland Thurman.
The discovery was made after James Bradley's book, "Flags of Our Fathers," was published in 2000. Thurman's relatives began telling others they knew who was in the photo.
Moments before the photo was made, "they had asked for volunteers from the 27th Regiment of the Marine Corps' 5th Division to help the 28th Regiment secure the mountain," Thurman, 82, recalled from his home in Boulder, Colo.
"I was standing down alongside the mountain, watching them gather for a picture," he said. "A guy called out, 'Hey, get up here.' I said I was with the 27th Regiment. He said, 'Makes no difference. You're one of us.' "
In that instant, Thurman became part of what would be known as the "Gung Ho" photograph. It is a famous shot for the moment in World War II that it represents. But it developed a bit of infamy as well when, days after the events on Mount Suribachi, Rosenthal was asked if he had staged his famous photograph.
Not even aware that his flag-raising photograph had come out and was being hailed around the world, Rosenthal thought they were talking about the "Gung Ho" photograph and confirmed that it was staged. Turned out they actually were referring to the flag-raising photo. Thus Rosenthal found himself battling the last 60 years of his life trying to correct the misconception, said Dan Crawford of the Marines Corps' History Division in Quantico, Va.
Begged to enlist
For Thurman, that single frozen frame of joy falls far short of defining his war experience.
In 1942, the oldest of Jack and Lorraine Thurman's 15 children was begging his father to sign the paperwork for him to enlist. The elder Thurman insisted he needed his 17-year-old son to help out on the family's dairy farm. So young Jack Thurman waited until his 18th birthday - Sept. 27, 1943 - then walked into the recruiter's office in Mitchell.
Seventeen months later, he was storming the beaches at Iwo Jima.
That volcanic island 650 miles south of Tokyo had three airstrips used by the Japanese. Capturing the island was crucial to the Americans for staging an invasion of mainland Japan.
By the time Thurman hit the southern beach, U.S. forces already had softened up the Japanese with B-29 bombing runs and naval bombardments. He scrambled over and around dozens of Japanese soldiers lying dead on the black volcanic sands.
"It was terrible," he said. "Their stomachs were bloated, and some stomachs had broken open. The smell was just horrific."
American forces landed Feb. 19. Four days later, Thurman was fighting in the middle of an airstrip when he looked over his right shoulder and saw the flag going up on 546-foot-high Mount Suribachi.
Tears filled his eyes.
"We'd lost a lot of men between the 19th of February and the 23rd," he explained. "So we weren't ashamed to shed a tear."
Marines' sacrifices
Iwo Jima proved to be the costliest battle in Marine Corps history. Its toll of 6,821 Americans dead, 5,931 of them Marines, accounted for almost one-third of all Marine Corps losses in World War II. Of the six men pictured raising the flag Feb. 23, three of them - Michael Strank, Franklin Sousley and Harlon Block - were dead before the battle ended.
For Japan, it was no better. Of 21,000 soldiers present at the beginning of the fighting, more than 20,000 were killed and only 216 taken prisoner.
"After the war," Thurman said, "I dealt with a lot of sad memories."
But he moved on with his life, got into architectural work and eventually settled in Boulder, where he helped design buildings on the University of Colorado campus.
Family members knew of the picture, knew he was the smiling Marine with his cap in the air. What they never realized was that the image hung in museums and sat in books with a caption beneath it that identified everyone but the unknown serviceman at the left.
Apparently, members of the 28th Regiment had provided identifications for the photo at some point. Because Thurman came late to the photo as a volunteer from the 27th Regiment, no one had his name. And the Marines made no effort to identify him.
"The Marine Corps takes the position that all Marines on Iwo Jima were heroes," Crawford said. "The attempt to identify every Marine in every picture, while it's of interest to everyone, if it's not in the official records, we don't identify them.
"We're not in a position to say 60 years later that this is this Marine or that Marine. It just upsets families and people who thought it was their next of kin, and it's not."
Telling his story
But Thurman's family had no doubt. When "Flags of Our Fathers" came out in 2000, renewing interest in Iwo Jima, they knew the Marine in the book's "Gung Ho" photograph was not unknown.
As word got out about Thurman's role in the photo, his fame rose, particularly in the Boulder area. He's been invited to speak in a number of venues, from Kiwanis clubs in Colorado to the Officers' Club on Okinawa. He tells the story of a young Marine who approached him after his talk in Okinawa and wanted to know whether military training really prepared a person for actual duty.
"That really caught me," Thurman said. "I told him, 'No. Your body is strong, and you're taught to overtake any kind of terrain, any kind of pillbox. But your mind ... is not ready to see what it's looking at on the ground before you.' "
After that, he decided to write a book about his experiences on Iwo Jima. He and his daughter, 44-year-old Navy Cmdr. Karen Thurman, are finishing it up.
In it, he talks about standing behind Ira Hayes in the photograph. Hayes, a Pima Indian, was one of the six men immortalized in the flag-raising photo.
"He was standing in front of me in the picture," Thurman said. "He said, 'Here, I'll kneel down so they'll be able to see you.' "
Hayes, tormented by the fame he received but did not want, would die 10 years later from alcoholism.
Thurman's book will recount many other memories, too, from the constant smell of sulphur on the volcanic island to the scent of death. It is a story worth preserving, Karen Thurman said, about a Marine of whom she and the rest of her family are very proud.
To that end, she said she is going to work to get her father's name placed in that photo caption. She's already honored him by following him into military service. She requested that her first duty station be Camp Pendleton in California because that was his last stop before he left the Marines.
"I wanted that connection just to be able to pick up where he left off, for him and for his buddies who died beside him," she said. "That photo, and everything my father did, is the reason I'm in the military."
Reach reporter Steve Young at 331-2306.
Ellie