It will not be over for another thirty-two days.

By the time it is, 6,821 Americans and virtually the entire Japanese garrison will be dead.

The young man on the left will be pulled off this island in a few weeks and taken home to be celebrated as a hero.

He will be told, in effect, that this photograph is his life now — that he exists, in the public imagination, at this moment, in this posture, on this mountain, raising this flag.

He will spend the next decade trying to live inside an image that was never large enough to hold him.