In our previous Marking History episode, we discussed the birth of battlefield photography.
Thanks to some brave combat photographers, we have a visual record of the
American Civil War, the Spanish American War and World War One.
In this episode, we will continue the story with a look at the work of some incredible combat photographers
who captured the events and emotions of World War Two.
Next on Marking History!
This is the historical marker for Joe Rosenthal,
the World War Two photographer who captured one of the most iconic photographs in photographic history!
Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima!
US Marines had such high regard for combat photographer Joe Rosenthal that they placed this marker
on the Marine Corps Base in Quantico, VA close to the National Museum of the Marine Corps.
Taken during the Battle of Iwo Jima in 1945, Rosenthal's still photograph
became the most famous and inspiring image of the war and won him the Pulitzer Prize.
Now let's continue with some combat photographer stories of World War Two.
Although motion picture photography advanced during World War Two,
here at the Marking History Channel we want to continue exploring the importance of still photography during WW2.
Why?
Because still photographs played a crucial role in documenting historical events due to their ability
to capture moments frozen in time --- with vivid detail and emotion.
They conveyed the human experience of historical events, capturing moments of joy, sorrow, bravery, and resilience.
Before December 1941, many of the WW2 combat photographers
started out as newspaper photographers or documentary cameramen.
They captured America's current events and social issues on film and those images were then distributed to the public
via newspapers and magazines.
During World War II, these same professional photographers put on a uniform
and traded the safety of home life for the dangers on the battlefield.
Congress authorized the US Army Signal Corps in the 1860s during the Civil War
to help with military intelligence, weather forecasting, and visual signaling.
During WW1, photography became a major component of the Signal Corps.
"a date which will live in infamy"
Two months after Pearl Harbor, the war expanded and the Army's photographic needs increased.
The U.S. Army Signal Corps took over the former Paramount Studios in New York City,
and turned it into the Signal Corps Photographic Center, later the Army Pictorial Center
which became home to filmmakers and still photographers who covered the war.
Sadly the 1400 military photographers who worked for the Army Signal Corps in Western Europe,
for the most part remained anonymous.
Their photos simply bore the credit line “Official U.S. Army photograph”
or “Official U.S. Navy photograph.”
Individual Signal Corps photographers were never allowed to be credited by name.
And then there were the other combat photographers who did not work for the Army Signal Corps.
They worked for magazines or the wire services and had their photographs published in magazines and newspapers.
These war correspondents were considered “civilian employees of the U.S. War Department,”
so they wore officers' uniforms with special insignia that indicated that they were official photographers.
Up next, three famous World War Two news photographers and their incredible stories.
Hungarian-born American photojournalist Robert Capa is perhaps one of the most famous war photographers of all time.
He covered many significant events during WWII,
including the D-Day landings on Omaha Beach, the liberation of Paris, and the Battle of the Bulge.
His favorite saying was,
Capa's most famous photographs were taken on Omaha Beach during the D-Day landings on June 6, 1944.
Despite facing enemy fire and adverse conditions, Capa managed to capture a series of images
that vividly conveyed the harrowing experience of the US soldiers landing on the beach.
Through fate or accident, only 11 pictures survived on that early morning on Omaha Beach,
bloodiest of the D-Day landings.
This group of images became known as "The Magnificent Eleven".
Capa stated that while under fire, he took 106 pictures in the first two hours of the invasion.
He returned to the United Kingdom within hours in order to meet a publication deadline for LIFE magazine's next issue.
It was later discovered that all but 11 negatives had been destroyed or lost.
This incident may have been caused by Capa's cameras becoming waterlogged at Normandy,
although the more frequent allegation is that a young assistant accidentally destroyed the pictures
while they were being developed at the photo lab in London.
"The Magnificent Eleven" prints were included in LIFE magazine's issue on June 19, 1944
with captions written by magazine staffers.
They are among the most iconic images of the Second World War
blurry, grainy and, the best of them, as stirring and in-the- moment as any battlefield photographs ever taken.
The pictures have been widely celebrated, and
Steven Spielberg is said to have been inspired by them while filming Saving Private Ryan.
After World War II, Capa continued to work as a photojournalist,
covering conflicts in Israel, Indochina, and other parts of the world.
Tragically, Capa was killed by a land mine on May 25, 1954, while covering the First Indochina War.
Despite his untimely death at age 40, Capa's legacy as one of the greatest war photographers of the 20th century
lives on through his powerful and enduring images.
Although the career of photojournalist Joe Rosenthal spanned more than 50 years,
he is best known for a single image: Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima.
At the onset of World War II, Rosenthal applied to join the U.S. Army as a military photographer.
However, he was rejected by the military because of his poor eyesight.
Eventually Rosenthal was assigned by the Associated Press to cover the war in the Pacific.
He quickly distinguished himself as an outstanding battlefield photographer
in arenas including New Guinea, Guam and Angaur before landing on Iwo Jima with the first wave of Marines on February 19, 1945.
Rosenthal used his bulky Speed Graphic, the standard camera for press photographers of the day,
to record dramatic photos of the beach landing while he dodged enemy fire alongside the troops.
Four days later, on Friday February 23,1945, after suffering terrible losses on the battlefield,
a platoon of 40 Marines from the 28th Regiment, Fifth Division, were sent to secure Mount Suribachi,
a Japanese stronghold and highest point on the island.
Upon reaching the summit, a small American flag was raised.
It was the first foreign flag ever to fly over Japanese soil. It was a defining moment for the Marines.
Marine Staff Sgt. Louis Lowrey from Leatherneck Magazine captured this photo.
However, after that first flag was raised, Japanese forces began to fire
and Sgt. Lowrey dropped his camera while ducking for cover.
As Lowrey was descending the mountain to get new gear, AP photographer Joe Rosenthal was ascending the mountain.
In response to seeing Japanese forces' reaction to the flag being erected on the mountain,
Marine Corps Lt. Col. Chandler Johnson ordered a new and larger American flag to be raised.
Rosenthal saw the opportunity to get a good shot of the second flag raising so he prepared for it.
Since he was only five-foot-five inches tall, Rosenthal stacked stones and a sandbag to stand on
in order to improve the shooting angle from his vantage point.
And then I estimated where they would be, where the flag would be, how tall is this thing,
how much far back I need to get in order to get them in.
Bill Genaust, the Marine photographer with the movie camera, came across in front, went just to my right and said
“I'm not in your way am I Joe?”
And I turned and I said “No that's fine. Hey there it goes Bill!
They had just lifted the pole off the ground.
And it was on its way up.
I wasn't referring to, even in my own mind, first the importance of first flag, second flag.
I wanted a flag going up on Iwo. And I wanted it badly.
And I could only hope that it turned out the way that I looked at it through the finder.”
Unsure if he had recorded a useable image, he then posed the flag raisers, grouped under the flag
in what Rosenthal described as a “gung-ho” picture.
The film was then shipped to the military press center in Guam where it was processed,
edited and transmitted via radio to the mainland.
It arrived in time to be on the front pages of Sunday newspapers across the country.
He was quickly wired a congratulatory note from Associated Press headquarters in New York.
But initially Rosenthal had no idea which one of his pictures had created such a sensation.
He simply assumed it was the posed “gung-ho” image,
so when someone asked if the photo had been posed, he said “Sure.”
Throughout his life, Rosenthal continued to battle the rumor that he somehow staged the flag- raising picture
or misrepresented the photo as the first flag-raising.
He repeatedly explained that he posed only the “gung-Ho” photograph, and denied any deception on his part.
The photograph appeared almost immediately in retail store windows, movie theaters, billboards,
and on President Roosevelt's desk.
The men who raised the flag in Rosenthal's photograph were ordered home and treated to a hero's welcome.
Unfortunately, only three had survived Iwo Jima.
FDR made the photograph the theme of the Seventh War Bond Tour,
which raised $26 billion dollars for the U.S. Treasury, more than any other bond tour.
Just five months after the flag- raising, a stamp commemorating the photograph was issued,
even though U.S. law prohibits images of living people on stamps.
Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima photo won the Pulitzer Prize in 1945
It was the only photo to ever win the Pulitzer Prize in the year it was shot.
Later the photo became the model for the 110-foot tall bronze Marine Corps War Memorial in Arlington, Virginia.
Joe Rosenthal passed away on August 20, 2006, at the age of 94,
leaving behind a legacy of extraordinary photographic work that continues to inspire and captivate audiences worldwide.
Margaret Bourke-White was an American photographer and photojournalist
known for her pioneering work in documentary photography and photojournalism.
She was one of the first female war correspondents and photographers during World War II.
In 1936, Margaret became one of the original four staff photographers for LIFE magazine,
a groundbreaking publication that revolutionized photojournalism.
During the mid-thirties, young Margaret traveled our country,
photographing those living through the hopelessness of poverty during the Depression.
The photos became a book, You Have Seen Their Faces, which explored the humanity and suffering during those years.
She was in Moscow during the German raids on the Kremlin,
where she captured Soviet leader Josef Stalin's portrait.
She and her fellow journalists are said to have ushered Russian citizens to safety
all while taking the only photographs of the attack,
including a shot of the Kremlin, lit by bombs exploding around it.
During her coverage of the war, Margaret Bourke White put her life on the line many times.
She was torpedoed in the Mediterranean, strafed by the German Luftwaffe,
bombarded in Moscow, and pulled out of the Chesapeake when her chopper crashed.
She was known to the LIFE staff as 'Maggie the Indestructible.'
The incident in the Mediterranean refers to the sinking of the British passenger liner
turned troopship the SS Strathallan.
A German U-Boat torpedoed and sank the graceful liner on the night of December 21, 1942.
On-board Strathallan were over 4,000 British and American troops, 250 Queen Alexandra Military Nurses,
872 crew members and one female wartime photographer named Margaret Bourke White.
As the troopship sank, Margaret had to decide which camera to save before entering her lifeboat.
When it came to choosing which of my six camera's I should save I didn't hesitate a second.
For I had worked that out carefully in advance.
Instead of packing my musette bag with extra clothing as instructed,
I had stored in it my Rolleiflex and an emergency film supply, together with one other camera,
my favorite Linhof, and the five most valuable of its lenses.
While the troopship was sinking, survivors were placed in lifeboats, waiting to be rescued.
Margaret documented her adventure with photos and a written journal
which became a LIFE magazine article called "Women in Lifeboats”.
Margaret was also the focus of an Army “pin-up” poster,
because of this photo that was captured after she flew on a B-17 bombing raid.
Her photos of the raid would run in LIFE magazine, and pictures of Margaret dressed in flying gear
made her perhaps the most clothed military pin-up of all time!
In the spring of 1945 she traveled throughout a collapsing Germany with Gen. George S. Patton.
It was on this trip that she arrived at Buchenwald, the notorious Nazi concentration camp.
She kept secret the fact that her father was Jewish.
After the war she produced a book entitled Dear Fatherland, Rest Quietly,
a project that helped her come to grips with the brutality she had witnessed during and after the war.
Bourke-White continued to work as a photographer and writer after World War II,
covering a wide range of subjects including politics, social issues, and celebrities.
She published several books and continued to receive accolades for her work until her death
from Parkinson's disease on August 27, 1971.
Margaret Bourke-White's legacy as a trailblazer in documentary photography and photojournalism
continues to inspire photographers and journalists around the world.
Robert Capa, Joe Rosenthal, Margaret Bourke White
three Combat photographers who risked their lives to document the horrors of war and left an indelible mark on history.
Their photographs captured a moment frozen in time --- with vivid detail and human emotion---
so that we never forget.
If history can be taught with stories
they can never be forgotten.
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