The bond tour ended in the summer of 1945.

The war in Europe had ended in May.

The war in the Pacific ended in August following the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and Japan’s subsequent surrender.

Ira Hayes was discharged from the Marine Corps in December 1945.

He was twenty-two years old and he had been to Iwo Jima and back and had spent months being a public symbol of American heroism.

He went home to the Gila River reservation.