Felix de Weldon, 1907-2003

The Marine Corps War Memorial (Iwo Jima), by Felix de Weldon

From the National Park Service History of the Marine Corps War Memorial:

“Joe Rosenthal of the Associated Press caught the afternoon flag-raising in an iconic photograph that eventually won a Pulitzer Prize. Sculptor Felix W. de Weldon, then on duty with the US Navy, was so moved by the image that he constructed first a scale model and then a life-size model of it. Gagnon, Hayes, and Bradley, the three men who were identified at the time as the survivors of the flag raising (the others were killed on Iwo Jima), posed for the sculptor as he modeled their faces in clay. All available pictures and physical statistics of the three who had given their lives were collected and then used in the modeling of their faces.

“Once the statue was completed in plaster, it was carefully disassembled and trucked to Brooklyn, N.Y., for casting in bronze. The casting process, which required the work of experienced artisans, took nearly 3 years. After the parts had been cast, cleaned, finished, and chased, they were reassembled into approximately a dozen pieces--the largest weighing more than 20 tons--and brought back to Washington, D.C., by a three-truck convoy. Here they were bolted and welded together, and the statue was treated with preservatives.”

The original 1945 photograph ny Joe Rosenthal

The Photograph that Inspired the Iwo Jima Monument

Joe Rosenthal’s photograph was published in the Sunday edition of the newspapers in America on February 25, 1945. A number of magazine later featured the photograph, which soon became an iconic image of America’s triumphal military efforts in the Pacific Campaign. Later that same year, the photograph was used for war bond drives throughout the country, raising over $26 billion for the war effort.