25 Rare Photos That Changed the Course of Our Nation

Feb. 23, 1945 — Raising the American flag on Iwo Jima

Taken on the island of Iwo Jima, Japan, U.S. Marines and a United States Navy hospital corpsman, raise a U.S. flag atop Mount Suribachi. These men fought alongside more than 70,000 Marines, sailors, and airmen on Iwo Jima, a tiny eight-square-mile speck of volcanic rock and sand midway between Guam and Tokyo, during the closing months of World War II. Three of the Marines depicted in this picture were killed in the following days.

Joe Rosenthal / AP