1945 0223 On This Day by Leo Rodriguez

Marines raise flag on Iwo Jima February 23rd, 1945

by Leo Rodriguez

 "Joe Rosenthal's famous photo of the second flag raising on Mount Suribachi. On Feb. 23, 1945, in the middle of one of the fiercest battles of World War II, a group of U.S. Marines carried a flag up the highest peak on the Pacific island of Iwo Jima and planted it there. Since 1947, the Marine Corps has attached six names to the famous flag-raising photo taken that day. And it says the case is closed."  ~ Omaha World Herald

On this day in 1945, Cpl. Harlon Block of Weslaco appeared in one of the most indelible images to come out of World War II. For three days the men of Company E, Second Battalion, Twenty-eighth Marines, had fought their way to the top of Mount Suribachi, a 550-foot-high extinct volcano at the southern end of the island of Iwo Jima. They first raised a small flag to signal their victory to their fellows below, and a larger flag later. In Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal's picture of the six men raising this second flag, which won the Pulitzer Prize, the twenty-year-old Block was the stooping figure guiding the base of the flagpole into the volcanic ash. He never saw the famous picture, however, as he was killed in action on March 1 as his unit advanced in the direction of Mishi Ridge. Block was buried in the Fifth Marine Division cemetery at the foot of Mount Suribachi, though his body was taken home to Weslaco in 1949.

[additional note by Leo Rodriguez]

 There was a little more to Harlon Block's story that should be told. In Joe Rosenthal's photo, he is the one on the far right with his knee on the ground as they plant the staff. Unfortunately, even though his mother recognized him as her son, he was misidentified by the "brass" in the Marine Corps. When Ira Hayes attempted to correct the error, he was ordered to remain silent. When the war ended, along with Ira Hayes' enlistment in the Corps, he hitch-hiked from his home in Arizona to find Harlon Block's father on a tractor plowing his farm land near Weslaco, Texas and informed him of the error.

Mr. Block invited Hayes to stay for dinner and spend the night at his home. Ira Hayes politely thanked him, refused the invitation, said that he had accomplished his mission, and immediately left the Rio Grande Valley, never to return. Without IRA HAYES and his devotion to his buddy, we would never have known that the point man in this iconic photo was really Harlon Block.

In the mid-1980's the statue's creator, Felix DeWeldon, made a deal to cast it's original model in bronze and place it at the entrance to Harlingen's Marine Military Academy/Valley International Airport. At it's base, you will find the remains of Marine Lance Cpl. Harlon Block. If you find the time, it is really worth visiting, and while you're there, maybe you might take a moment to remember what his "greatest generation" did for our world when freedom was threatened.
*. Brock was also a key member of the Weslaco High School football team.