JABQ04 said:
In 1945 they knew they misidentified one Marine, after Gagnon gave his list of who was there, but told the survivors (Hayes, Gagnon, and Bradley to roll with it essentially since the USMC has already gave our who they thought was in the pic.
I keep asking myself how did they not know who was in this famous pic, but then I stop and think that these men didn't know it was a big deal at the time. One flag was as good as another. I think a lot of it was honest mistake. Dudes thinking they put up a flag on suribachi but just not the flag made famous by Rosenthal.
That's exactly what happened.
It wasn't until '47 (I think) when Ira Hayes literally hitchhiked from Arizona to Weslaco, Texas to tell Harlon Block's parents that it was Block in that photo and not Henry Hansen. Block's mother rather famously said that she knew it was Harlon as she had diapered that bottom and "knew her boy". She had said from the first time she saw the photo that she knew it was him, even before it was confirmed by Hayes.
And to add a bit more to your second paragraph....A) They were in the middle of one of the most fierce battles in history. Putting up that flag was little more than an afterthought to them B) They had no idea that this photo even existed, much less was going "viral" back home C) As Panzer alluded to, the flag raising in the famous photo wasn't the first flag to go up on Suribachi that day. Some bull down on the beach decided that the flag wasn't large enough and ordered another to be raised, this is what you see in the famous photo (and also the reason so many (incorrectly) claim it was staged). D) Three of the flag raisers in the Rosenthal photo never made it off the island so half of the participants weren't around to vouch for the others.
Bradley was part of the group that raised the first flag and for the reasons above. it was probably an honest mistake on his part. I won't lie though, I have wondered if as the years passed, and more information became available, if it did dawn on him at some point that he had been mistaken. I don't hold it against him though. He didn't like talking about it. Hell the guys that were ACTUALLY in the photo either didn't know it or never came forward to claim their "rightful" places. I think there was quite a bit of survivors guilt in those guys and they all felt that the "real" heroes were the guys that died over there.
