The USS North Carolina (BB-55) My all-time favorite warship. As an elementary school student in North Carolina, I donated nickels and dimes to save this ship back in the early sixties.

Saturday, April 27, 2013

The Man Who Provided the Iwo Jima Flag Dies: Alan Wood, 90-- Part 1

From the April 25, 2013, Los Angeles Times by Steve Chawkins.

ALLAN WOOD, 90

Died April 18, 2013.    Alan Wood never claimed to be a hero but he certainly had an important supporting role in one of the war's most recognizable photographs, the raising of the second U.S. flag at Iwo Jima.

On February 23, 1945, five Marines and a Navy corpsman planted a flag atop Iwo Jima's Mt. Suribachi.  AP photographer Joe Rosenthal was there and took the photograph.  Mr. Wood wasn't there, but it was his flag that they raised.

In 1945, he wrote: "The fact that there were men among us who weer able to face a situation like Iwo  where human life is so cheap, is something to make humble those of us who were so very fortunate not to be called upon to endure any such hell."

He was communications officer on LST-779 which had landed very close to Mt. Suribachi that day.

GreGen

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