GREATEST GENERATION Photographer
Joe Rosenthal in July 2000, with his
Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph of the
8 .S. Marines raising the ʀag on Mount
Suribachi, Iwo Jima on February 2, 1 .NEWSWEEK.COM 13
men are driving the flag into hostile
foreign ground is at least suggestive
of something darker, which the U.S.
censor never allowed the American
people to see.
Most of all, however, this is a study
in vengeance. The story that begins
with Pearl Harbor ends with Ameri-
can troops raising their flag on Japa-
nese soil. It is a stark warning: this is
what happens to anyone who dares
attack America.
But vengeance and grim determi-
nation are not qualities that explain
the reverence with which most Amer-
icans regard this monument. There is
clearly something else going on.
To understand this, one must move
one’s gaze from the figures at the front
of the monument to those at the back.
These men are not driving a spike into
the soil, they are reaching their hands
up, as if to heaven. Above them fliesthe U.S. flag. The figure right at the
back is trying to touch the flagpole,
his outstretched fingers not quite
reaching it. The effect is reminiscent
of Michelangelo’s famous painting of
Adam stretching his hand toward God
in the Sistine Chapel in Rome.
Felix de Weldon, the artist who
sculpted the memorial, explained the
image in a speech at the inauguration
in 1954. “The hands of these men
reaching out,” he said, are “groping
for that which may be beyond one’s
means to attain, needing assistance
from the power above, that power
which we all need in times of
adversity, and without whose
guidance our efforts might well be
fruitless.” This divine guidance is
symbolized by the flag above them,
which de Weldon called “the emblem
of our unity, our power, our thoughts
and purpose as a nation.”In other words, the real subject of
the sculpture is not the U.S. Marines at
all, nor the victory over the Japanese,
nor anything else to do with the
Second World War. It is the flag which
gives the monument its real meaning.
This symbol, with its fusion of God
and nation, is the real reason why the
memorial is so well loved in America.
If there is a gulf of understanding
between Europeans and Americans
over the memory of the Second World
War, then this is one of the issues that
lies at the heart of it. Europe and
America learned very different lessons
from the war. In the 1930s, Europe
was exposed to all the dangers of
flag-waving. In the violent years that
followed, it experienced firsthand
what happens when fanatical
nationalism is allowed to get out of
control. As a consequence, flags today
are symbols that must be treated with
great care. In post-war, post-colonial
Europe, anyone who shows excessive
passion toward their national flag is
generally treated with suspicion. The
idea of a monument glorifying the
planting of a national flag on foreign
soil would be absolutely unthinkable.
In the U.S., by contrast, flags are
everywhere: outside courtrooms,
outside schools and government
buildings, in public parks, outside
people’s homes, on their cars,
adorning their clothes. The national
anthem, which is nothing less than a
hymn to the flag, is sung before every
NFL football game; and the pledge
of allegiance to the flag is recited by
every child from the moment they
are old enough to attend school. This
has been the case since long before
FR the Second World War; but the war
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