The coverage was rarely cruel in an explicit way, but it was also rarely careful about the larger context that might have made it more honest.

What the arrests reflect, more than personal failure, is the intersection of several things simultaneously: untreated trauma from combat experience, alcohol dependency that had developed during the bond tour and deepened afterward, the absence of meaningful economic opportunity in his community, the psychological weight of being a symbol rather than a person, and the historical context of a community that had been systematically denied the resources that would have made flourishing more possible.

He was also, during this period, continuing his effort to correct the official identification of Harlon Block.

This required him to keep engaging with the military, with the press, and with the official apparatus that managed the public memory of Iwo Jima — all of which were painful for someone who was struggling with that memory.