Author says his father was not in iconic Iwo Jima photo

Although, I do agree with the author. The story is great because of the folks involved, whether his dad was present at the "iconic" flag raising is kind of unimportant. They are still great stories

I found the piece of interest, as well as his having obviously quite freely acknowledged it. When I saw the film, I compared it with a now I think little rembered film on the life of Ira Hayes with Tony Curtis I'm fairly certain playing him. To be quite candid the makeup on Tony Curtis was as absolutely abysmal I'd thought , which was certainly why I found the depiction by Adam Beach who gave what I thought was a quite fantastic performce in the HBO film on wounded knee singularly refreshing. For some reason I quite prefer the films of Eastwood forr sevl reasons. First, because Eastwood is a vet, which I do think lends his cinematography a very real bent toward realism that, regardless of the famed opening sequence, I think is very definitely lacking in the saving private Ryan film. The band of brothers and Pacific miniseries were clearly extremely well done, certainly, as well done as flags of our fathers, however, which I did note, those, I'd read, were quite clearly done with pretty much scrupulous accuracy, or, at least, no overt or glaring errors historically, at least none I could discern, so far as I could tell. The flags of our fathers film clearly was seeking to convey an era; that there was so much muddle about the photo I had of course read for years. I actually thought that, and still think, despite any errors as to who's in the photo as recounted in the article, that the film was quite accurately done, or, at least, very strongly gave that impression. Whereas, by contrast, the sepia tinted imagery of the saving private Ryan film, with all its clearly beloved sentiment, did, at least to my mind obscure the true story of the niland brothers of tonawanda NY, on whom the story isarently largely based, with there having been more than sufficient truth to their story to not, at least from my perspective, needing to have paraphrased the story to the extent that it did, fictionalizing actual characters to create drama that gives the appearance of truth, without the historical substance. I actually much preferred the film the Thin Red Line, though Id read one of the most historically accurate ww2 films of late was the great raid about the liberation of the Cabanatuan POW camp for survivors of the Bataan death march on Luzon in the Philippines. Those are my thoughts such as they are; I also thought the letters from iwo kima film a quite interesting counterpoint view of the iwo Jima battle, I'd be eager for any thoughts and or reactions of course and hope that was of interest, many thanks .

I'm sorry to learn about this because I do remember Doc Bradley when he was touring the country during WWII and from what I recall he was a very brave man who was awarded the Navy Cross, & Purple Heart for his actions on Iwo. I also recall he had to hobble on crutches because of his leg wounds. There were a lot of wounded Marines on Iwo who Doc Bradley helped especially during the battle to take Mount Suribachi. I guess I am a one of a few here who remember WWII very well & served with a lot of combat veterans from both WWII & Korea. They were on "The Canal" or on "Iwo" or up at the "Frozen Choisin"..and only a handful every talked about what they experienced. Most would just stare off into space when we asked them anything about their months in combat and say "Boy it was tough" and that was about all they would say.