Flags of Our Fathers

by James Bradley

  Within a few hours, Ira, Rene, and John—now “immortal heroes”—would hit the road with their sacred relic to inspire the populace.

  They boarded a train bound for New York. As they traveled, Treasury Secretary Morgenthau and Commandant Vandegrift commented on their journey in a national broadcast from a Washington studio with Bob Hope as host. Hope then sang a duet with Bing Crosby via a remote hookup with Hollywood. The song was one that disc jockeys all over the country would play for months afterward: Crosby’s recording of “Buy, Buy Bonds.”

  The boys did not travel unsupervised. Accompanying them was their chaperon: Keyes Beech, the Marine correspondent. Ira explained Beech’s role in a letter home to his parents: “Four of us are on this trip. Gagnon, Bradley and Tech. Sgt. Beech, who is watching over us and taking care of our traveling business. He’s a swell guy and I like him.”

  Ira liked Beech for a number of reasons, including several wrong ones. Paramount among them was the fact that Keyes reinforced Ira’s soggy notions of a good time. George McArthur, Beech’s good friend in later life, told me, “Keyes was a big drinker. He was a drop-dead alcoholic until he joined Alcoholics Anonymous in the 1960’s. He used to tell me that he and Ira drank every night on the Bond Tour and that his main job was to get Ira to the scheduled events.”

  The boys disembarked at Grand Central Station to a huge applauding reception committee. They gaped at blowups of the Bond Tour poster that papered the cavernous Main Hall. Whisked ten blocks up Park Avenue to the Waldorf-Astoria, the boys passed likenesses of themselves that seemed to cover just about every surface in the city.

  Nearly every New Yorker had beheld those likenesses. The bond poster fluttered from street lamps; it adorned buses and taxicabs; it festooned the windows of banks, factories, post offices, and department stores. In the most tangible of ways, the boys’ reputation had preceded them.

  Another reproduction of the image was draped above the Waldorf’s entrance. As the boys entered the lobby, the staff of the world-famous hotel lined their path and applauded.

  As soon as he’d settled in his room, a dazzled John Bradley grabbed a sheet of Waldorf stationery and dashed off a note home:

  Dear Mom, Dad & all,

  We just arrived at New York and look where we’re hanging our hats. Boy, what a swanky joint. I couldn’t pay for a room if I had $100. All our meals are free and valet service also…I’m really all excited about the whole affair so if I don’t sound like myself, you’ll know why.

  At about the same time, Ira was likewise scribbling away:

  Dear Parents and Brothers,

  We just arrived here in NYC about 2 hours ago from Washington. I can’t hardly realize I’m here in the most famous hotel in the world. But I am…

  Tomorrow is a big day. We go to the Roxy Theater in the morning and make an appearance. Then we go to Times Square to unveil the monument of the flagraising on Iwo, which is 25 feet high. And then the dinner to be held in our honor in the evening. Then we leave for Philadelphia and Boston and back here in New York. So you see we will be busy.

  Your excited but happy son…

  Ira H. Hayes

  New York City’s bond sales goal was $287 million, and the boys’ schedule was crammed. They commenced their roles as tour celebrities on Thursday morning with an autograph-signing session at the Roxy Theater in Times Square. Their admirers crowded the lobby, gaping at the boys beneath a huge enlargement of Rosenthal’s photograph, which had been wedged between smaller portraits of Roosevelt and Truman.

  Meanwhile, fundraising events blossomed around the city. At the Astor, representatives of the ready-to-wear industry enthusiastically pledged to raise $100 million. Life insurance executives, dining elsewhere, pledged the efforts of thirty thousand New York area agents to the cause.

  But the big show unfurled Friday, May 11, in Times Square. There, with Mayor Fiorello La Guardia and tens of thousands of New Yorkers looking on, the five-story Iwo statue was unveiled. The Times coverage the next day featured a photograph of John raising the flag over the statue as Rene, Ira, Commandant Vandegrift, and the mayor saluted.

  Again and again, despite abundant opportunity, the three boys refused to pick up the theme of press and speechmakers and portray themselves as valiant warriors who hoisted the colors against sheets of enemy fire. New York reporters threw the first of many chances to them. But the three chose instead to tell the unadorned truth: They had simply put up a replacement flag. A bit sourly, perhaps, the Times reported that the three “looked a bit harried and confessed that appearing for the Seventh War Loan Drive ‘is not as much fun as it would seem.’”

  Clearly, modesty wasn’t enough for the aggressive urban press. Glory was the thing that sold papers. The press wanted tales of blood-and-guts heroism from the living icons in front of them. It was my father who finally cut the reporters off at one impromptu press conference. They should just report the truth, John Bradley said: “It took everyone on that island and the men on the ships offshore to get the flag up on Suribachi.”

  Ira learned to take refuge from such ordeals in his beloved bottle. His drunkenness created acute demands on his equally bibulous chaperon. At a banquet that night, Beech struggled to keep the befogged Ira conscious enough to “say a few words” when his turn came. Beech later wrote:

  There is something disconcerting about presenting to an audience a man who is gently snoozing at your side. But the Chief always came to life when I mentioned his name.

  He would stand, acknowledge the introduction with a prodigious yawn, which invariably brought a mass response from the audience, then sit down and go back to sleep.

  Ira was a hell of a good fighting man, but he wasn’t the kind of guy you’d pick to send on a Bond Tour. His drinking, Beech believed, was a defense against his own insecurity.

  On Saturday, cheering crowds in Philadelphia got a glimpse of the boys as their motorcade sped to Independence Hall, where they posed for the flashbulbs in front of the Liberty Bell. The press fished for a fantastical story, but the three offered the only one they could remember, mostly about the first flagraising.

  And once again, the press probed for a hotter angle. One reporter, offering no proof, mentioned a rumor that the photo was posed. The boys, refusing to go along with the hyperbole, fired back that “the picture was entirely spontaneous.”

  The next stop was Boston, where a shocking discovery reminded everyone how real, and how close, the war could be: Three German submarines had been captured just off the coast, and were being towed into Boston Harbor for surrender.

  All of which gave fresh significance to the Bond Tour. The Massachusetts goal was $700 million, and Hollywood stars—including Joan Fontaine and Jane Wyman, then the wife of Ronald Reagan—had been trickling into town to add glamour to the festivities.

  Miss Fontaine and Miss Wyman found themselves upstaged by a most brazen amateur. As the Boston press corps milled in a roped-off area at South Station on Sunday morning, waiting for the boys’ train to arrive, an attractive young woman appeared out of nowhere and marched up to them. In a distinct New Hampshire accent, she informed the reporters that she was here to meet her “hero-fiancé,” and suggested that they might want to get a photo of the happy reunion.

  It was Pauline, who had made the trip from Manchester to Boston on her own initiative. When the train pulled in, she swooped forward to greet the nonplussed Ira, John, and Rene as they alighted. And became the star of the day.

  Her bold ploy did not go over well with the other two. Ira, whose discomfort amidst women was deeply ingrained, thought it vulgar for Pauline to be pursuing Rene so publicly. John, the conservative Catholic, did not approve of an unchaperoned single woman in their midst.

  None of it mattered to Pauline, who recognized her ticket out of the mills. Almost as soon as Rene had come home, she’d begun pressuring him to marry her.

  Irene Gagnon tried to protect her son from Pauline’s onslaught. “Irene told my dad, ‘Don’t get married s
o young, don’t be stupid,’” Rene Jr. told me. “‘You’re traveling on the Bond Tour. Wait. Come home and think it over.’

  “But Pauline pushed him. When my dad came back as a hero, my mother lived on it. That meant she could travel and do more things. It became a big deal in her mind.”

  A torrential downpour did not keep 200,000 Bostonians from lining the parade route to applaud. The movie stars rode in jeeps that carried large placards identifying them; the boys rode in an unmarked car. No ID was needed.

  They raised the flag over the statehouse with the governor, and with 100,000 Bostonians observed simulated military maneuvers on the Boston Common. Speaker after speaker spoke of the boys’ gallantry.

  And again, it was Ira who provided the unscripted spark. After the governor had introduced him as “the only man here who can claim to be a real American,” Ira strolled to the microphone and brought the house down with: “I’m an Indian and I’m damn proud of it.”

  Ira was a curiosity to the press as well. The Boston Globe printed a story about how the “full-blooded Pima Indian from Arizona…feels more at home with a tommy gun in his hand than he does before a microphone.” The thrust was that “with the memory of his many buddies killed and wounded on Iwo Jima and with plenty of war against the enemy Japs still ahead of us, Ira didn’t want to come back.”

  This made for stirring copy, but wasn’t quite accurate. Ira liked many things about the Bond Tour, especially the late nights. In fact he enjoyed almost everything about the tour except his main assignment: talking to the press and public.

  On Monday afternoon, May 14, the three “heroes” rolled back into New York for ceremonies that would spotlight a dramatic Wall Street war-bond pledge of staggering proportions. An added tier of distinction marked this return visit: Joining Ira, John, and Rene on the speakers’ platforms would be the mothers of the three fallen flagraisers.

  John Strank escorted his mother, Martha, from Franklin Borough, Pennsylvania, to the city. “My dad was just so broken up after Mike’s death that he couldn’t go,” John recalled. “It was a challenge for my mother. She worried that her English was not good enough.”

  From Hilltop, Kentucky, Goldie—now Mrs. Hensley Price—arrived. She’d never before been more than 150 miles from home, she told a reporter. And from Somerville, Massachusetts, Mrs. Madeline Evelley, the mother of Hank Hansen, still identified as the sixth flagraiser, traveled to the city with her daughter Gertrude.

  The combined entourage checked in at the Waldorf, where politicians and military brass doted on them. At dinner in the ballroom that evening, the Duke and Duchess of Windsor, perhaps the most famous couple in the world, petitioned a waiter for introductions to the three survivors.

  But for Ira, John, and Rene, the personages who mattered were the three bereaved “Gold Star” mothers. (“Gold Stars” were banners displayed in the window of a slain serviceman’s home.) “I remember Ira Hayes grabbing my mother; he was so emotional, he wouldn’t let her go,” said John Strank. “He was sobbing. It took a few people to get him off her.”

  My father and Mrs. Evelley gravitated toward each other. John had been Hank’s close friend. He had rushed to Hansen when he was shot, and had tried to save his life. And now, here in the dash and glitter of a far different world, John at last was able to make the quiet gesture he had pledged to make amidst the smoke and slaughter of Iwo Jima: He withdrew from his pocket the watch that he had slipped from dead Hank’s wrist, and placed it in Madeline’s hands.

  The next morning the mothers and the boys were ushered onto a reviewing balcony at the New York Stock Exchange. Trading was halted as the ticker sign flashed, WELCOME IWO JIMA HEROES, and the traders erupted in applause.

  Thousands more awaited the group outside as marching bands encouraged a festive mood. Wall Street was jammed and office workers peered from their canyon windows through the sea of Bond Tour posters.

  At the stroke of noon the music ceased, and the crowd hushed as three matronly women wearing dark orchids and dazed expressions were escorted to the platform.

  Reporters noted the instant when the three women and the three flagraisers touched fingertips, a moment that “caused onlookers to fall silent and avert their eyes.” The Times observed that “The survivors did not look at the posters, nor did the mothers of the fallen comrades.”

  The New York Stock Exchange president then announced a stunning pledge: The Wall Street Broker-Dealer Syndicate had committed itself to raise one billion dollars for the Seventh War Loan—enough to finance creation of a Superfortress fleet of sixteen hundred B-29’s, geared to the destruction of Japan.

  For the six guests of honor on the platform—the three flagraising “heroes” and the three bereaved mothers—this moment must have throbbed with wildly competing emotions.

  The boys, so recently returned from battle, had not yet recovered from its ravages. My father was crying in his sleep. Ira was drinking hard. And Rene had developed a tic that would never go away. Yet here they were, the inspirations, at least in part, for an outpouring of wealth that might save thousands of American lives.

  As for the mothers, they were still in a haze of grieving. From the families of the three, I have often heard it remarked that their grief could never end: The fact of The Photograph obliged them to relive it over and over again.

  Massive throngs, a “million-dollar cast” of Hollywood stars, and three days of patriotic fervor awaited them in Chicago, where several hundred thousand public and parochial schoolchildren had become volunteer bond salespeople. The local sales goal was $327 million. Humphrey Bogart was in town, and Lauren Bacall, and Ida Lupino. And Pauline Harnois. Once again the New Hampshire girl elbowed her way into the spotlight, showing up unannounced on Friday as the train pulled in. Rene, sensing Ira’s scorn and John’s quiet disapproval, tried to make the best of it.

  On Saturday, May 19, 100,000 cheering people crammed themselves into the Chicago Loop for a massive rally. Beside a huge painting of the familiar image, the boys went through their paces.

  Again, it was John Bradley who injected the thoughtful note. Responding to the official welcome, my young father stepped to the microphone and repeated the terse message he had delivered in other cities:

  “Men of the fighting fronts cannot understand the need for rallies to sell bonds for purchase of seriously needed supplies. The bond buyer is asked only to lend his money at a profit. The fighting man is asked to give his life.”

  The people in the crowd listened, and dug deep.

  The crowning display was set for Sunday—“I Am an American Day,” as sponsored by the Hearst newspapers. At Soldier Field, Hearst had financed the construction of a miniature Suribachi. Fifty thousand people would pour into the great stadium near the shores of Lake Michigan to watch a parade and glimpse such stars as Pat O’Brien, Forrest Tucker, and Henny Youngman.

  But the real stars of the day would be three young men who had never made a movie, never recorded a song, and never told a joke before a microphone. And the 50,000 who came to watch them were moved by emotions far more profound than mere celebrity worship.

  These, after all, were the Americans who formed the solid home front of World War II: the men and women who worked assembly lines to build the tanks and guns; who gave sons and daughters to the conflict; who collected paper and bottles and scrap iron for the war effort; who as priests and ministers gave solace; who as day-today citizens sacrificed their luxuries and their necessities in the cause of victory. Now, on one glorious afternoon, these solid-core Americans could flow together into one large red-white-and-blue celebratory mass—could stand in the sunshine with the heroes in the “immortal” frieze, and be as one with them.

  One of the heroes, however, had been reenacting other pursuits. Ira turned up missing throughout Saturday night; the police finally found him walking the Loop after a night of drinking. Over his protests—he’d already raised one flag on Iwo, he didn’t know why he had to raise another—Beech and others hauled
him back to the hotel, poured ice water over him, and “slapped him into something resembling sobriety.” The flagraising at Soldier Field was an hour away.

  For the triumphal tour around the stadium in an open Cadillac, Beech made sure to wedge Ira between John and Rene so that he would not fall out. Observing all this from the reviewing stand was Commandant Vandegrift. Reports had reached the commandant that “the Indian” was creating a bad name for himself and the Corps. Something, it was clear, was going to be done about Ira Hayes.

  He wobbled through the flagraising reenactment, joining John and Rene in hoisting the famous flag. And then Ira Hayes packed his bags and, with the others, made ready to hit the road again.

  After several days in Detroit and Indianapolis, the tour returned to Chicago. From the Palmer House, on May 24, Ira wrote to his parents anticipating future stops in St. Louis and Tulsa; marveling at the gift of the $21 pen he was using to write the letter, and closing that he had to go down to breakfast. It was to be his last letter, and his last breakfast, on the tour.

  Later that morning a Marine colonel telephoned Keyes Beech with an order to bring Ira to his office. In the reception area, Ira slumped in a chair with his hands in his pockets. When the colonel and a Marine captain arrived, the captain told Hayes to stand up. Sullenly, the young Pima got to his feet and faced the bad news.

  He was to rejoin his unit, Easy Company, in the Pacific, Colonel Fordney told him. The orders had come from the commandant, Vandegrift. Ira was silent at first. Then he asked if he could visit his mother in Arizona en route. The colonel snapped that it would not be possible, and thrust a United Airlines ticket toward Beech.

  The Marine Corps and Bond Tour officials gave Ira a face-saving cover—one that ironically confirmed his press image as a fighting man who yearned for active duty: He was being sent back overseas “at his own request.”