Strank was killed on March 1, 1945, six days after the flag raising, by a mortar round.

He was twenty-five.

Corporal Harlon Block was from Rio Grande City, Texas.

He was nineteen years old at the time of the flag raising.

He had been a football star at Mission High School, recruited to play at the University of Texas, but had enlisted in the Marines instead.

His mother, Belle Block, later said she had recognized him in the photograph almost immediately — from his posture, from the way he planted his body.

The Marine Corps initially said he wasn’t in it.