The monument showed him, thirty-two feet tall in bronze, at the moment the flag was raised — permanently young, permanently in the act of raising the flag, permanently at the moment of triumph.

He was thirty-one years old that November, and he would be dead six weeks later.

What he thought, looking up at the monument, is not recorded.

He did not speak extensively about it in the accounts that exist.

What can be said is that by that point in his life, he had been living with the photograph for nearly a decade — seeing it reproduced, encountering it in unexpected places, being recognized by strangers because of it, carrying the weight of what it meant for the public while also carrying the weight of what Iwo Jima had actually been.

The monument made that weight permanent and architectural.