photo #9031057

February 23, 1945:On this day, during the Battle of Iwo Jima, six U.S. Marines raised an American flag atop Mount Suribachi, and Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal captured the moment in a single frame.The image, now known as Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima, quickly circled the globe. Within days it appeared in newspapers across the country and soon after in countless publications worldwide. It became one of the most recognized photographs ever taken... not staged heroics, just a split-second moment during an exhausting and brutal campaign in the Pacific.The flag-raising itself wasn’t the end of the battle. Fighting continued for weeks, and the cost was staggering. But that photograph came to represent resilience, sacrifice, and unity at a time when the world desperately needed symbols of hope.Years later, the image inspired the Marine Corps War Memorial in Arlington, ensuring that moment on Mount Suribachi would never be forgotten.Some photographs document history. Others become part of it.