What The Photograph Became Before Hayes Left The Island

Joe Rosenthal’s photograph was transmitted by radiophoto from Guam on February 25, 1945.

Within forty-eight hours, it had appeared on the front pages of newspapers across the United States and around the world.

The image landed at a particular moment in the war.

The Pacific campaign had been grinding and costly and distant — fought on islands whose names most Americans couldn’t have located on a map before they became sites of bloody battles.

The photographs that came back from the Pacific were often technically difficult to capture and sometimes showed things the public found hard to look at directly.