I received an email from a close friend of mine last night and the subject of the email was dealing with the Imo Jima Memorial in Arlington, Va. When I read it, the story brought back to me some very fond memories of being stationed in the Washington, D.C. area. The place is just totally filled in monuments and statues about our country’s history. After reading the story, I could just picture in my mind and remembered being at the same place with my mom and dad. I also remember a few times that just me and my wife (deceased) would ride over there just to watch the evening ceremonies in the summer time. They could put on a show like you would not believe.
It also brought back some memories from when we had brought my grandmother up for a visit a few months after my grandfather died. She had always wanted to visit Washington D.C., but had never had the chance until we got her to come up for a week. My wife took the whole week off from work and they spent everyday in the city visiting the different memorials and places you could go. I can still see her sitting in my living room one evening telling me about visiting the grave of President John F. Kennedy and she had tears running down her face. She loved that man.
I would recommend to anyone thinking of a vacation to or around the Washington, D.C. to take full advantage of it. It is a once in a lifetime trip for anybody and the history of it is something special to see.
But anyway, the email last night I got was about the six military people on the Marine Memorial, better known of the Iwo Jima Memorial. The story itself has been around for a while now, I know it has been around since 2007. But it actually never gets old, and that is why it pop’s up in email threads so often. I thought it would be something interesting to blog about because we talking about military personnel that are hero’s in our books, but in there books they were doing nothing but there jobs. So here it is for everybody’s enjoyment.
Six Brave Soldiers
Each year I am hired to go to Washington, DC, with the eighth grade class
from Clinton, Wisconsin, where I grew up, to videotape their trip. I
greatly enjoy visiting our nation's capitol, and each year I take some
special memories back with me. This fall's trip was especially memorable.
On the last night of our trip we stopped at the Iwo Jima Memorial. This
memorial is the largest bronze statue in the world and depicts one of the
most famous photographs in history - that of the six brave soldiers raising
the American Flag at the top of a rocky hill on the island of Iwo Jima,
Japan, during WW II. Over one hundred students and chaperones piled off
the buses and headed towards the memorial. I noticed a solitary figure at
the base of the statue, and as I got closer he asked, "Where are you guys
from?" I told him that we were from Wisconsin. "Hey, I'm a cheese head, too! Come gather around Cheese heads, and I will tell you a story."
(James Bradley just happened to be in Washington, DC, to speak at the
memorial the following day. He was there that night to say good night to
his dad, who has since passed away. He was just about to leave when he saw
the buses pull up. I videotaped him as he spoke to us, and received his
permission to share what he said from my videotape. It is one thing to tour
the incredible monuments filled with history in Washington, D.C., but it is
quite another to get the kind of insight we received that night. When all
had gathered around he reverently began to speak. Here are his words that
night.)
'My name is James Bradley and I'm from Antigo, Wisconsin. My dad is on that statue, and I just 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 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 type 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 don't say that to gross you out, I say that because there are people who stand in front of this statue and talk about the glory of war. You guys need to know that most of the boys in Iwo Jima were 17, 18, and 19 years old - and it was so hard that the ones who did make it home never even would talk to their families about it.
(He pointed to the statue) 'You see this next 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...a photograph of his girlfriend Rene put that in there for protection because he was scared. He was 18 years old. It was just boys who won the battle of Iwo Jima. Boys. Not old men.
'The next guy here, the third guy in this tableau, 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 Pima Indian from Arizona. Ira Hayes was one of them who lived to walk off Iwo Jima. He went into 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 carried the pain home with him and eventually died dead drunk, face down, drowned in a very shallow puddle, 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. His best friend, who is now 70, told me, 'Yeah, 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-lovin' hillbilly boy. Franklin died on Iwo Jima at the age of 19. When the telegram came to tell 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. Those neighbors lived a quarter of a mile away.
'The next guy, as we continue to go around the statue, is my dad,  John Bradley, from Antigo, Wisconsin, where I was raised. My dad lived until 1994, but he would never give interviews. When Walter Cronkite's producers or the New York Times would call, we were trained as little kids to say 'No, I'm sorry, sir, my dad's not here. He is in Canada fishing. No, there is no phone there, sir. No, we don't know when he is coming back.' My dad never fished or even went to Canada. Usually, he was sitting there right at the table eating his Campbell's soup. But we had to tell the press that he was out fishing. He didn't want to talk to the press.
'You see, like Ira Hayes, my dad didn't see himself as a hero. Everyone thinks these guys are heroes, 'cause they are in a photo and on a monument. My dad knew better. He was a medic. John Bradley from Wisconsin was a combat caregiver. On Iwo Jima he probably held over 200 boys as they died. And when boys died on Iwo Jima, they writhed and screamed, without any medication or help with the pain.
'When I was a little boy, my third grade teacher told me that my dad was a hero. When I went home and told my dad that, he looked at me and said, '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. My voice is giving out, so I will end here. Thank you for your time.'
Suddenly, the monument wasn't just a big old piece of metal with a flag sticking out of the top. It came to life before our eyes with the heartfelt words of a son who did indeed have a father who was a hero. Maybe not a hero for the reasons most people would believe, but a hero nonetheless.
One thing I learned while on tour with my 8th grade students in DC that is not mentioned here is . . that if you look at the statue very closely and count the number of 'hands' raising the flag, there are 13. When the man who made the statue was asked why there were 13, he simply said the 13th hand was the hand of God.
We need to remember that God created this vast and glorious world for us to live in, freely, but also at great sacrifice
Let us never forget from the Revolutionary War to the current War on Terrorism and all the wars in-between that sacrifice was made for our freedom...please pray for our troops.
STOP and thank God for being alive and being free due to someone else's sacrifice.
The Truth of this story:
The author of this story is Michael T. Powers. It is published on his website at http://www.hearttouchers.com/iwojima.
It has also been reprinted in several books including Chicken Soup for the Grandparent's Soul.
It was originally titled The Boys of Iwo Jima. The title has been changed by people who have forwarded it around the Internet and who have also eliminated the author's name and added the last paragraph, which was not in the original.
A new version of the story started circulating in 2007 that added the paragraph which I put in red print which Michael Powers also said was not a part of the original story and he did not know where it came from. It said "One thing I learned while on tour with my 8th grade students in DC that is not mentioned here is that if you look at the statue very closely and count the number of "hands" raising the flag, there are 13. When the man who made the statue was asked why there were 13, he simply said the 13th hand was the hand of God." The statue only has 12 hands on it. Despite this myth of having 13 hands, the sculpture Felix de Weldon was asked one time about 13 hands and his reply was “Thirteen hands. Who needed 13 hands? Twelve were enough.”
Also, the references to the men in the original story was "six brave men," not "six brave soldiers," but none of them would properly be called a soldier, which refers to those who serve in the Army. Five of them were Marines and one was a Sailor.
As they were sculpting the Memorial Statue of the Raising of the Flag on Iwo Jima, the Marine Corp was searching for the money to construct the base on which the statue rests. Cpl. Stephen B. Sheldon (Deceased), stationed at Camp Pendleton during the Korean War, was given the task to make it happen. Single handedly, he raised the money by arranging for a MG dealer to commit to donating a brand new car to the cause and then set to personally sell enough raffle tickets, on base, to arrange for the construction of the base and plaque to hold the magnificent statue.
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