They landed on sulfur island--Iwo Jima to the Japanese army that held it--on Feb. 19, 1945. On the fifth day of the death slog (the battle would rage for another five weeks), U.S. troops had commandeered enough of the island to reach the peak of Mount Suribachi. "Put a flag up there," one officer advised, and a few men did. But some bigwig wanted it as a souvenir, so six other men planted a second pole and raised the Stars and Stripes one more time. That was the tableau captured by photographer Joe Rosenthal--the one that told a war-weary American public...
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