Remembering an Iwo Jima hero who carried a camera

I was 10 years old when my cousin Sgt. William Homer Genaust, a Marine Corps photographer, age 37, sat in our home while on leave. Bill had come home in the summer of 1943 to visit his mother, Jessie, and my mother, Bill’s Aunt Mabelle. After he left, we never saw him again.

Bill graduated from Pipestone High School in 1925 and moved to Minneapolis where he attended the University of Minnesota. He married a young woman named Adelaide, who grew up on an Iowa farm and moved to Minneapolis, where she and Bill met.

In July 1944, after his home visit, Genaust was wounded at the Battle of Saipan in the South Pacific. Although recommended for the Navy Cross for his role in a firefight, the medal was denied because — although he often carried a sidearm and a rifle — photographer, not infantryman, was his official job description.

On Feb. 19, 1945, my cousin landed on the beach at Iwo Jima with the 4th Marine Division. The opening day of the battle, as the men were attempting to establish a beachhead, 9,000 Japanese soldiers attacked and killed 550 Marines and wounded 1,800.

Iwo Jima is one of the most desolate islands in the South Pacific. Volcanic in origin, the 4½-mile-long island is covered in ankle-deep black sand and ash from which sulphorous mists arise from the mud-colored surface.

Mount Suribachi, the source of the volcanic ash, stands at the southern point of the island. In preparation for war, the Japanese had built an elaborate, 11-mile system of tunnels below the 554-foot peak.

At 10:30 a.m., Feb. 23, 1945, Sgt. Louis R. Lowery, a photographer with the Marine Corps magazine Leatherneck, stood atop Surabachi, where he photographed Marines holding a water pipe with a small American flag suspended from it. When a Japanese soldier lobbed a grenade at Lowery, the photographer rolled down and survived a 50-foot drop that destroyed his cameras.

Around noon, Bill Genaust and Robert R. Campbell, another Marine photographer, were ordered to ascend the volcano and look for subjects to record on film. On the way up, they met Lowery coming down and Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal making his way toward the top.

By the time Rosenthal and the Marines reached the summit, a second, larger (4-by-8-foot) flag was being raised, one that troops below and offshore ships could clearly see.

Genaust and Rosenthal stood side-by-side. The AP photographer was shooting black and white film with a Speed Graphic camera while Genaust captured the second flag-raising with a 16 mm moving picture camera with color film.

At that moment, no one, including Rosenthal, knew that one still photograph would become the iconic World War II image. For years, Rosenthal was forced to defend his photo as genuine and unstaged. Genaust’s film proves the flag-raising was unrehearsed.

In 2005, an article in Parade magazine aroused new interest in Genaust and his role in recording the second flag-raising with moving picture film. One historian has called Bill’s 198 frames “one of the most reproduced strips in the history of filmmaking, civilian or military.”

Genaust’s film was later used in John Wayne’s “The Sands of Iwo Jima” (1949) and as a standard, nightly sign-off image for hundreds of TV stations. An actor in Clint Eastwood’s “Flags of Our Fathers” (2006) portrays the Iwo Jima photographer.

Bill Genaust’s work on Iwo Jima was not yet done. Japanese soldiers were barricaded in the labyrinthine network of tunnels that threaded their way beneath the volcanic sand. Innumerable caves also held marauding soldiers, forcing Marines to move from one site to the next where enemy soldiers hid.

Six days after shooting the flag-raising, Bill Genaust volunteered to inspect a cave thought to have been cleared of enemy soldiers. Bill used either a flashlight or a light from his camera to aid in his search. As he crawled forward, enemy soldiers opened fire, killing my cousin instantly.

The cave was part of a 362-foot mound on the northwest corner of the island dubbed Hill 362A. Following Bill’s death, the cave entrance was dynamited, bulldozed and sealed. For a short time, Bill Genaust was listed as missing in action.

In 1995, a bronze plaque was placed on top of Suribachi in honor of the photographer. In 2007, a seven-person government search team was sent to the island to try to retrieve the photographer’s remains, only to find that his body was unrecoverable.

During the war, Adelaide wrote Bill every day. Their letters reveal a special relationship. Bill Genaust had planned to enter medical school at the University of Minnesota after the war ended. Adelaide, his wife of 17 years, died in Florida in 1994 after losing a second husband.

Marines paid a dreadful price on Iwo Jima, though neutralizing the island meant U.S. long-range bombers could reach mainland Japan. The 31-day battle left 6,821 U. S. troops dead, 19,217 wounded, and 250 missing, many lost at sea. Of 82 Medals of Honor given to Marines in World War II, 26 were earned on Iwo Jima, 14 posthumously. Nine-hundred segregated black Marines were used as ammunition carriers, but many picked up rifles and joined their fellow white Marines.

Just over 1,000 out of 21,200 members of the Imperial Japanese Army survived the battle. Many, according to custom, took their own lives rather than surrendering. In 1951, two Japanese soldiers who thought the war was an ongoing affair were found alive on Iwo Jima.

Family records were invaluable for this column. Bill Genaust’s service records were lost in a fire in St. Louis, Missouri, in 1973. Other sources of information include: Bill D. Ross, "Iwo Jima: Legacy of Valor," Vintage Books, 1996; and Tedd Thomey, "Immortal Images: A Personal History of Two Photographers and the Flag Raising on Iwo Jima," Naval Institute Press, 1996. The Marine Corps Heritage Foundation gives an annual award in Genaust’s name to honor a documentary filmmaker who advances and preserves Marine Corps history.

The flag-raisers

The second flag-raisers who were captured in Bill Genaust's film were:

• Pfc. Ira H. Hayes, a Native American from Arizona and a carpenter by trade. He died in 1955.
• Pfc. Franklin R. Souseley, a factory worker from Kentucky, who died on Iwo Jima.
• Sgt. Michael Strank, a Pennsylvania state highway laborer, who died on Iwo Jima.
• Cpl. Harlon H. Block, a farm and oil field worker from Texas, who died on Iwo Jima.
• Pfc. Rene Gagnon, New Hampshire, a textile mill worker. He died in 1979.
• Pharmacist’s Mate John H. Bradley, a funeral director from Wisconsin. He died in 1994.

This is the opinion of Bill Morgan, an architectural historian and St. Cloud State University professor emeritus. He can be reached by email at wtmorgan@stcloudstate.edu.

See the film

Film from Iwo Jima by Sgt. William Genaust, including footage of the flag-raising, can be found at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lEg9aRy0UM0.