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Marines raise flag on Iwo Jima
On this day in 1945, Cpl. Harlon Block of Weslaco appeared in one of the
most indelible images to come out of World War II. For three days the
men of Company E, Second Battalion, Twenty-eighth Marines, had fought
their way to the top of Mount Suribachi, a 550-foot-high extinct volcano
at the southern end of the island of Iwo Jima. They first raised a small
flag to signal their victory to their fellows below, and a larger flag
later. In Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal's picture of the
six men raising this second flag, which won the Pulitzer Prize, the
twenty-year-old Block was the stooping figure guiding the base of the
flagpole into the volcanic ash. He never saw the famous picture,
however, as he was killed in action on March 1 as his unit advanced in
the direction of Mishi Ridge. Block was buried in the Fifth Marine
Division cemetery at the foot of Mount Suribachi, though his body was
taken home to Weslaco in 1949.
- Links to Related Handbook of Texas Online Articles
- BLOCK, HARLON HENRY
- WORLD WAR II, TEXANS IN
- WESLACO, TX
- Other Texas Day by Day Articles for This Date
- Secession referendum passes by landslide (1861)
- Legislature establishes Gillespie County (1848)
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