South Lake Tahoe veteran to be honored in Washington, D.C.

Raymond Jacobs revealed last year what he remembers about the famous, iconic photograph showing Old Glory being raised by six men atop Mount Suribachi on Iwo Jima.

There were actually two flags and two separate photo shoots, the South Lake Tahoe man told an Associated Press reporter in a February 2005 story marking the 60th anniversary of the picture.

The first photograph was taken as a small flag was being raised improvisationally, he said. There were cheers among the soldiers - including Jacobs, who was a young radioman - as the flag went up.

A couple hours later, another and much bigger American flag was raised at the same spot among another group of men while the smaller one simultaneously came down.

The photograph that has become known around the world as a moment of American victory was not exactly 100 percent true to the moment it happened, Jacobs claimed.

Jacobs' story has gathered steam, hitting newspapers across the country. This spring, the retired journalist wrote about what happened for the Marine Corps Gazette, the official magazine for the U.S. Marine Corps.

This month, Jacobs got news that will add credence to his claim that he was among the six men who initially raised a much smaller U.S. flag in front of cheering soldiers, and that the famous photograph was engineered later - it is theorized - so that the flag would appear to be much bigger.

In a November ceremony, Jacobs and 13 other men involved in raising both flags will be honored at the Marine Corps Museum outside Washington, D.C. In their honor, a painting of the famous scenes will be unveiled, with each of the survivors signing their names to it.

"It's a real honor and breakthrough to be asked" said Jacobs, 80.

Other veterans who have supported his claims say they're pleased that his story has begun to set the record straight on what really happened Feb. 23, 1945.

"In the Bible, you have the apostles. In the Marine Corps, you have these guys at Iwo Jima. They are the Marine Corps' apostles," said Richard W. Buchanan, a Placerville veteran of the Vietnam War and fundraiser for a veterans memorial there.

Flag story unfurled

Jacobs' story begins Feb. 19, 1945, when he and thousands of Marines were pinned down on the black sand beach as bullets, mortars and artillery rained down from an invisible enemy burrowed into the island.

Iwo Jima would be the deadliest battle in Marine Corps history, killing nearly 7,000 Americans. On the morning of Feb. 23, after a four-man reconnaissance patrol returned from the 550-foot summit of Suribachi, Jacobs, a member of Fox Company, 2nd Battalion, 28th Marines, was ordered to fill in for Easy Company's radioman on a combat patrol up the mountain.

With a 40-pound radio strapped to his back and carrying an M-1 rifle, Jacobs says he made a nerve-racking scramble up the rugged peak with 40 strangers.

After making it to the summit without resistance, a group men tied a small flag to a length of water pipe found in the debris and hoisted it. When it was aloft, a spontaneous roar rose from the shore.

"All of a sudden, you could hear voices down below screaming and yelling and cheering," Jacobs told the Associated Press. "It was an incredible feeling, a very emotional feeling. The boats who were beached and the big ships at sea started blowing whistles and horns and all the rest of it. The flag going up indicated to them that this monster observation post for the enemy was now under our control."

Lou Lowery, a photographer for Leatherneck magazine, captured the moment from several vantage points. But those photos were not published for two years, shelved when a second patrol planted a replacement flag.

The reason for the swap is not clear. Some suggest the first flag was taken as a souvenir; others said it was too small.

For whatever reason, a larger flag was run up the hill. Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal forever defined the moment when he caught five Marines and a Navy corpsman pushing the second flagpole skyward.

Jacobs says he was off the mountain when the second flag went up, but spoke with reporters after the first flag-raising.

The Feb. 24 front page of the now-defunct Los Angeles Herald-Express said: "Pfc. Raymond E. Jacobs of the Twenty-eighth Marines was revealed in an Associated Press dispatch today as being a member of the patrol of 14 leathernecks who proudly raised the flag on rugged Mount Suribachi, on the southern tip of Iwo Jima yesterday." The Los Angeles Times incorrectly put Jacobs' name in the caption of the Rosenthal photo on its front page the following day.

A letter Jacobs wrote home, dated Feb. 25, uses the Japanese name for the volcano, but confuses either the day of the event or the date of writing: "We took Mount Suribachiyama yesterday and ran up a flag. It really looks nice up there."

Two weeks later, Jacobs was hit with shrapnel from a Japanese mortar on March 10 and evacuated with wounds that earned him a Purple Heart.

Jacobs only became aware of the Rosenthal photo after returning home - and he was puzzled at first because it didn't depict what he had witnessed.

It was not until 1947, after the war, that Lowery's picture of the first flag-raising was published in Leatherneck. In response to an inquiry from Jacobs, Lowery wrote that his story had been kept secret because Rosenthal's shot provided good publicity.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt ordered three men in the Rosenthal photo to return home, where they promoted war bonds. Over the years, many others claimed they were there.

Not looking for fame

But Jacobs says he is not a glory seeker. "The flag-raising and the patrol became just another event," Jacobs told the Associated Press last year. "We didn't see it as a defining moment in our lives. It was just something we had done, and we were happy about it."

• Tribune City Editor Jeff Munson and Associated Press Writer Brian Melley contributed to this report