This comes from an impromptu talk given at the Iwo Jima Memorial by the son of one of the men depicted raising the Flag.

“My name is James Bradley and my dad is on that statue. I wrote a book called ‘Flags of our Fathers’ and it is the story of the six boys you see behind me. Six boys raised the flag. The first guy putting the pole in the ground is Harlon Block. Harlon was an all-state football player. He enlisted in the Marine Corps with all the senior members of his football team. They were off to play another kind of game - a game called ‘War’ but it didn’t turn out to be a game. Harlon, at the age of 21, died with his intestines in his hands. I tell you this because there are generals who stand in front of this statue and talk about the glory of war. You need to know that most of the boys on Iwo Jima were 17, 18 and 19 years old.

You see this guy? That’s Rene Gagnon from New Hampshire. If you took Rene’s helmet off at the moment this photo was taken and looked in the webbing of that helmet, you would find a photograph of his girlfriend. Rene put it in there for protection, because he was scared. He was 18 years old. Boys won the battle for Iwo Jima, not old men.

The third guy on this statue was Sergeant Mike Strank. Mike is my hero - he was the hero of all these guys. They called him the ‘old man’ because he was so old - he was already 24. When Mike would motivate his boys in training camp, he didn’t say ‘Let’s go kill some Japanese’ or ‘Let’s die for our country’. He knew he was talking to little boys. Instead he would say ‘You do what I say, and I’ll get you home to your mothers’.

The last guy on this side of the statue is Ira Hayes, a Pema Indian from Arizona. Ira Hayes walked off Iwo Jima and he went to the White House with my dad. President Truman told him ‘You’re a hero’. He told reporters ‘How can I feel like a hero when 250 of my buddies hit the island with me and only 27 of us walked off alive?’ So you take your class at school. 250 of you spending a year together having fun, doing everything together - then all 250 of you hit the beach but only 27 of your classmates walk off alive. That was Ira Hayes. He had images of horror in his mind. Ira Hayes died dead drunk, face down at the age of 32 - ten years after this picture was taken.

The next guy going around the statue is Franklin Sousley from Hilltop, Kentucky - a fun loving hillbilly boy. His best friend told me ‘You know, we took two cows up on the porch of the Hilltop General Store. Then we strung wire across the stairs so the cows couldn’t get down. Then we fed them Epsom salts - those cows crapped all night.’ Yes he was a fun loving hillbilly boy. Franklin died on Iwo Jima at the age of 19. When the telegram came to his mother that he was dead, it went to the Hilltop General Store. A barefoot boy ran that telegram up to his mother’s farm. The neighbors could hear her scream all night and into the morning and the neighbors lived a quarter mile away.

The next guy as we continue to go around the statue is my dad, John Bradley from Antigo, Wisconsin. He lived until 1994 but he would never give interviews. He didn’t want to talk to the press. My dad didn’t see himself as a hero. Everyone thinks these guys are heroes ‘cause they are in a photo and a monument. My dad knew better. He was a medic. John Bradley was a caregiver. In Iwo Jima he probably held more than 200 boys as they died - and when boys died on Iwo Jima, they writhed and screamed in pain.

That’s the story of the six nice young boys. Three died on Iwo Jima and three came back as national heroes. More than 7,000 boys died on Iwo Jima in the worst battle in the history of the Marine Corps.” This is an important insight into the real faces of war.