It was 80 years ago today when the Allies won the Battle of Iwo Jima after a month of intense fighting with the Japanese.
Just a couple of years after the Second World War, John Wayne starred in Sands of Iwo Jima, a movie reenacting it.
At 42, the Hollywood actor felt he was too old to play Sgt John M Stryker, and at one point, Kirk Douglas was under consideration for the role before director Allan Dwan realised he could get Duke.
The film famously recreated the iconic flag-raising photograph from the battle, when six US Marines had the honour atop Mount Suribachi on February 23, 1945.
Tragically, half of them (Sergeant Michael Strank, Corporal Harlon Block, and Private First Class Franklin Sousley) would be killed in action.
The three survivors were Privates First Class Ira Hayes, Harold Schultz, and Harold Keller. Incredibly, the latter two weren’t correctly identified by the US Marines until 2016 and 2019, respectively. John Bradley, incorrectly identified as Schultz, was in the first flag-raising photo, and Rene Gagnon carried the second larger flag upon Mount Suribachi but wasn’t in the famous photo.
Bradley, Gagnon and Hayes were the three vets who reenacted the second raising in the Sands of Iwo Jima movie, but only the latter was actually there. Hayes was on the far left with his arms raised. Nevertheless, symbolically those three all took part in that iconic moment recreated in Wayne’s World War 2 classic, with the actual flag on loan from the US Marine Corps Museum.
Following the film’s success, Wayne received his first Best Actor Oscar nomination, which he really felt should have gone to his role in John Ford’s Western, She Wore a Yellow Ribbon. In honour of his new World War 2 film, the star was invited to mark his fist and footprints in the pavement outside Grauman’s Chinese Theatre in Hollywood. Black sand from Iwo Jima was flown over to Los Angeles especially to be mixed into the cement. It’s there to this day.
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