The ongoing deplorable treatment of Iwo Jima Marine Ira Hayes
What else can “the powers that be” do to rewrite American history and make this country an authoritarian, lily-white conclave in addition to closing government offices, eliminating the jobs of thousands of federal employees (including veterans), abolishing research grants and aid for the hungry and starving, renaming the Gulf of Mexico, wanting to make Canada the 51st state, talking about taking over Greenland and the Panama Canal and other horrible decisions?
Of course, they can do much more and are doing so. To top it off now, the Department of Defense has now taken down information from its websites referencing Ira Hayes, a Pima Indian Paramarine who fought on Bougainville and Iwo Jima in the Pacific during World War II and was one of the six Marines who raised the second flag on Mount Suribachi during the battle for Iwo Jima.
Pima Native American and World War II Marine Ira Hayes was among those who raised the second flag atop Mount Suribachi during the grueling 1945 battle of Iwo Jima. The Pulitzer Prize-winning image of that event, taken by Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal, inspired a war-weary America and became one of the most famous photographic images in history. References to achievements by minority service members have recently been eliminated by the U.S. Department of Defense.
It’s an ongoing outrage by an administration that is destroying a democracy that so many have fought and died for. The Native American code talkers, who were instrumental in defeating the Japanese in the Pacific because the Japanese could not break the code, also had their information removed. These men have been revered for the job they did to help win the war. Because of the resulting complaints, those pages are apparently going to be restored. Like much else going on now, Hayes’ webpage never should have been taken down in an elimination of “diversity, equity and inclusion” (DEI).
The famous flag raising photo with Hayes and the Marines from Easy Company, 2nd Battalion, 28th Marine Regiment, 5th Marine Division did much to help in the war effort. Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal’s iconic photo helped raise $26.3 billion in the Seventh War Bond Drive needed to win the war with Japan and was the model for the Marine Corps War Memorial near Arlington National Cemetery in Northern Virginia where all references to diversity have also been removed.
The 40-man patrol in Capt. Dave E. Severance’s company had climbed Mount Suribachi earlier on Feb. 23, 1945, and raised the first flag. Those first flag raisers were the patrol leader, 1st Lt. Harold Schrier, Plt. Sgt. Ernest “Boots” Thomas, Sgt. Henry Hansen, Cpl. Charles Lindbergh, Pfc. James Michaels and PMc2. John Bradley, initially identified as Pfc. Louis Charlo — Bradley was mistakenly later identified as one of the second flag raisers.
To keep the first flag that had been raised earlier for the 2nd Battalion and raise a larger flag, Severance sent his company runner Pfc. Rene Gagnon up with the larger flag and a four-man detail led by Sgt. Mike Strank, Cpl. Harlon Block, Pfc. Ira Hayes and Pfc. Franklin Sousley, who were taking radio wire up for the earlier patrol. Not long after they reached the top, the second flag replaced the first one. The four were joined in raising the second flag by Pvt. Harold Schultz and Pfc. Harold Keller, who were not identified as second flag raisers until 2016 and 2019, respectively.
Upon seeing the first flag, Marines on the island whooped and hollered, and ships just off the coast sounded horns and whistles. Not much was said about the second flag until the film was developed back on Guam and the photo was printed in the Sunday newspapers back in the States on Feb. 25, two days after the flag was raised. Like other Marines on Iwo Jima, Capt. Severance (later retiring as a colonel) said no one thought much about the flag and were headed north in battle.
But a few weeks later, President Franklin Roosevelt asked for the names of the men in the photo and wanted them to be returned to the United States to participate in the bond drive. Strank, Sousley and Block had been killed. Hansen was thought to be in the photo but also had been killed. And it was determined that Rene Gagnon, John Bradley (who had been wounded and was in a hospital in Guam) and Ira Hayes were the remaining ones who were thought to have raised the second flag. Gagnon was sent back to Washington. Before he left, Hayes — who wanted no part of what was to come — threatened him not to name him, but Gagnon finally broke down and identified him. Severance wrote about this in his recent, posthumously published book, “My Iwo Jima Saga” (Tales Press).
Gagnon, Bradley and Hayes traveled around the country, participating in staged flag raisings, media interviews, and were wined and dined in meet-and-greets with dignitaries and donors. Hayes didn’t fit in well, drank excessively and was arrested. He was finally sent back to his unit on the Big Island in Hawaii where the 5th Marine Division went back to Camp Tarawa to train for the anticipated Invasion of Japan after Iwo Jima.
When the war was over, and Hayes was discharged as a corporal, he went back to the reservation in Arizona, and then hitchhiked to Harlan Block’s family in Texas to tell them that he was the one sticking the flag pole in the ground and not Henry Hansen. Block’s mother reportedly said she knew that was her son’s bottom because she had changed it so much when he was a baby.
Hayes never adjusted well after the war, continued to drink excessively and eventually died at 32 years old after passing out in a ditch on a cold desert night. For years, he was thought to be the sole surviving flag raiser until it was determined years later that Schultz and Keller, who never spoke publicly that they had been with Hayes and the others, also helped raise the second flag.
Three movies were made about Iwo Jima and the flag raisers, including Hayes, and Johnny Cash wrote the song, “The Ballad of Ira Hayes,” with these words included about his life after his service to the country and what it had done to him: “When war came, Ira volunteered and forgot the white man’s greed.”
And now this administration has taken down the webpage that tells about his life and his role in how he helped save this country in an effort to erase history and forget him. How ungrateful.