Rosenthal’s image was different.

It was dynamic, compositionally perfect, and it carried a symbolic charge that was immediately recognizable: men working together to raise their country’s flag on a height captured at great cost.

President Roosevelt saw it and ordered the six men identified and brought home for a war bond tour.

The Seventh War Loan drive needed a boost.

The war in Europe was approaching its end, but the Pacific war still stretched toward a horizon that military planners estimated could include a bloody invasion of the Japanese home islands.

The photograph could be the centerpiece of a bond campaign.