~*`IWO JIMA FLAG RAISING`**~**1945**~
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~**`IWO JIMA FLAG RAISING`**~**1945**~
Heading: Iwo Jima Flag Raising (for posting)
Date: Tue, 30 Aug 2011 22:55:15 -0700
(From email circulation)
~*~*~*~`IWO JIMA FLAG RAISING`~*~*~*~
'February 23,`1945'
~*~*~~~`Six Boys Raised The Flag."~~~*~
~*~`The following excerpts are taken from
~`James Bradley's `Best Seller Book`~
~*~`FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS`~*~
"The Author is James Bradley ~ from Antigo, Wisconsin.
{`His Dad is on that statue}, who wrote a book called
"Flags of Our Fathers" which is #5
on the New York Times Best Seller list right now.
` It is the story of the Six boys who 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.
`He died at the age of 21.
{ Most of the boys in Iwo Jima were 17, 18, and 19 years old."}
Boys won the battle of "Iwo Jima"~Not Old Men!
`Next guy is 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 ...a photograph of his girlfriend.
"The third guy in this tableau, was sergeant Mike Strank.
` He was the hero for 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 Pima Indian from Arizona.
`Ira Hayes walked off Iwo Jima.He went into the White House.
`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?"
`He had images of horror in his mind.
Ira Hayes died 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-lovin' hillbilly boy.~~
Franklin died on Iwo Jima at the age of 19."
"The next guy, as we continue to go around the statue,
is John Bradley from Antigo, Wisconsin.
`He lived until 1994,but he would never give interviews.
`He didn't want to talk to the press.
" didn't see him as a hero.
He was a medic. John Bradley from Wisconsin was a caregiver.
` In Iwo Jima he probably held over 200 boys as they died.
And when boys died in Iwo Jima, they writhed
and screamed in pain."
His quote:~ 'I want you always to remember that the heroes
of Iwo Jima are the guys who did not come back.
Did NOT come back.'
`"So that's the story about six nice young boys."
`Three died on Iwo Jima,~~~
and three came back as national heroes.
` Overall, 7,000 boys died on Iwo Jima
in the worst battle in the history
of the Marine Corps."
~*~*`A TRIBUTE TO IWO JIMA, FALLEN HEROS`~*~
Courtesy of~~ Semper Fi,
Jim Denova (GySgt, Ret'd)
"A Tribute to Those Who Fell at Iwo Jima"
by CDR Richard C. Butlerý
` On March 14, 1945, standing before survivors
of the great battle of Iwo Jima while all scanned
the thousands of grave markers of crosses and
stars, Chaplain Roland Gittlesohn delivered the
following address at the Fifth Division Cemetery
at the conclusion of the battle:
"This is perhaps the grimmest,and surely the holiest,
task we have faced since D-Day.
`
Before us lie the bodies of comrades and friends,
men who until yesterday or last week laughed with us,
trained with us, men who were on the same ships with us,
and went over the sides with us as we prepared
to hit the beaches on this island,
men who fought with us and feared with us.
` Somewhere in this plot of ground there may lie the
man who could have discovered the cure for cancer.
Under one of these Christian crosses, or beneath
a Jewish star of David, there may rest now a man
who was destined to be a great prophet...
to find the way,
perhaps, for all to live in plenty.
` Now they lie here silently in this sacred soil,
and we gather to consecrate this earth in their memory.
` ...To speak in memory of such men as these is not easy.
Of them, too, can it be said with utter truth: `The world
will little note nor long remember what we say here.
It can never forget what they did here.
`...These men have done their job well. They have paid the
ghastly price of freedom. If that freedom be once again lost,
as it was after the last war, the unforgivable blame
will be ours, not theirs.
` So it is we, `The Living`, who are here to be dedicated
and consecrated.
` We dedicate ourselves, first, to live together in peace
the way they fought and are buried in this war.
` Here lie men who loved America because their ancestors
generations ago helped in her founding, and other men who
loved her with equal passion, because they themselves
or their own fathers escaped from oppression
to her blessed shores.
`Here lie officer and men, blacks and whites, Protestants,
Catholics and Jews...together. Here no man prefers another
because of his faith or
despises him because of his color...
` Any man among us, `The Living`, who fails to understand that,
will thereby betray those who lie here dead. ...To this, then,
as our solemn, sacred duty,
do we the living now dedicate ourselves:
`To the right of Protestants, Catholics and Jews, of white men
and Blacks alike, to enjoy the democracy for which all of them
have here paid the price.
` To one thing more do we consecrate ourselves in memory
of those who sleep beneath these crosses and stars..
...This war, with all its frightful heartache and suffering
is but the beginning of our generation's struggle for democracy.
When the last battle has been won, there will be those at home,
as there were last time, who will want us to turn our backs
in ish isolation on the rest of organized humanity,
and thus to sabotage the very peace for which we fight.
`We promise you who lie here: We will not do that!
When the last shot has been fired, there will still be those
whose eyes are turned backward, not forward,
who will be satisfied with those wide extremes of poverty
and wealth in which the seeds of another war can be sown.
` We promise you, our departed comrades: This, too, we will
not permit. This war has been fought by the common man!
We promise, by all that is sacred and holy, that your sons-
the sons of miners and millers, the sons of farmers and workers-
will inherit from your death ~the right to a living
that is decent and secure.
Thus do we memorialize those who, having ceased living with us,
now live within us. Thus do we consecrate ourselves, the living,
to carry on the struggle they began. Too much blood has gone
into this soil for us to let it lie barren.
Too much pain and heartache have fertilized the earth
on which we stand.
` We here solemnly swear: This shall not be in vain!
Out of this, and from the suffering and sorrow of those
who mourn, this will come-- ~`we promise`~--the birth
of a new freedom for the sons of men everywhere.
`author unnamed`
~*~` Amen `~*~
©*2011*
Proudly Presented By:
`Mary Jane's Poetry`
Never Ending Circle Of Love`
By;`Janie/mjfb1954`
*RePost*©*2014*In Honor Of Flag Day*14th of June*
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~*`IWO JIMA FLAG RAISING`**~**1945**~
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