The New York Times

[Captain Liger 0]

I've been reading Flags of Our Fathers by James Bradley this week before I go and see the movie and while reading Chapter 12 entitled "Myths," I came across some very interesting information that I was unaware of about the New York Times. Enjoy.

Then there was the shifting emphasis of reportage as the assault on the volcano wound down. The distant reporters had lavished great detail on the fierce fighting that led the Marines to the base of the mountain. Then they added three days of fanciful and garbled accounts of a murderous fight up Suribachi's slopes. But they never mentioned the actual, quiet walk up Suribachi on that Friday morning of February 23. On that day, lacking any supporting photos of the conquest, the editors substituted a photograph of Marines pinned down on a hill far to the north. This only added to the false impression that Marines had been pinned down on Suribachi's slopes.

On Saturday, February 24, the day after the flagraisings and the day before the photo appeared, correspondents continued to embellish the myth of the battle of Suribachi:

SURIBACHI REACHED IN A FIERY BATTLE

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WAY TO VOLCANO'S BASE BURNED WITH FLAMETHROWERS PRIOR TO SCALING OF VOLCANO

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ASCENT MADE BY MARINES AS JAPANESE HURLED GRENADES AND POURED BULLETS ON THEM

The boys of Easy Company would have howled at these gross exaggerations, but the Times copy just kept it up. Suribachi was the devil incarnate, "seeping steam and volcanic fumes," and the Japanese "were rolling grenades down the steep tawny cliffs to burst in the faces of advancing Marines" as the embattled Marines "called for ropes and stretchers to lower the wounded over the sharp cliffs."

These were the myths and inaccuracies that shaped Americans' perceptions of the battle in the days before the photograph appeared. When it did spring into the nation's consciousness on that Sunday morning, the photograph fused with the accumulated myth, and seemed to depict a final triumph in the very teeth of battle.

The Times was not through yet. It continued to fan the flames of hilltop heroism with the report that Boots Thomas "broke out the ensign, which was about three feet long, while his company was under intense enemy sniper fire." How to explain this travesty of accuracy? How could an unopposed forty-five-minute climb up a hill and a quiet flagraising be portrayed as a valiant fight to the death?

The Marines were not to blame. None were quoted as sources, and none have since been blamed for the misleading hyperbole.

Quite simply, the press faltered in its duty. It replaced reportage with romanticism. Carried away by the daily valor of the Marines, working at a safe but obfuscating distance, and swept up in its own fantasy of a swashbuckling fight for a mountain, reporters invented the heroic fight up the slopes, and the flagraising among whizzing bullets, out of whole cloth.

In later months and years, when the myth was found to be just that, other reporters focused their suspicions on the men on the mountain. Then a new myth, an antimyth, took root, fanned by later complacent reporters who made no effort to root out the true story.

Tsk, tsk New York Times. 60 years ago you report battlefield heroics that never took place and 60 years later you don't bother to report the very heroics that ARE taking place. In the buzz of post election news did anyone hear the announcement on Friday of a Marine to posthumously receive the Medal of Honor for actions in Iraq? I know I didn't read about it in my local newspaper...which is owned by the NYT.

NYT = toilet paper

[otterinbham 0]

26,000 American casualties on Iwo. I guess that was a figment of the imagination.

[Captain Liger 0]

Whose imagination?

[otterinbham 0]

The historians.

[Captain Liger 0]

Which historians are you referring to? If you're referring to Mr. Bradley, he makes it quite clear in his book the sacrifices that we made on Iwo. His father, one of the flagraisers, would probably have come back to haunt him if he hadn't. The quote above was from one page in one chapter of his book. It simply points out the lengths that the NYT went to to embellish a story that needed no embellishment and had nothing to do with the total number of casualties.

So which historians are you referring to?

[quietfan 233]

"seeping steam and volcanic fumes,"

First time I've seen a reference to this, also. Since the Japanese had laced the mountain with tunnels, pillboxes, and underground barracks, I'd love to know what advanced technology they used to make habitable Swiss cheese out of a "semi-active" volcano.

[Captain Liger 0]

"seeping steam and volcanic fumes,"

First time I've seen a reference to this, also. Since the Japanese had laced the mountain with tunnels, pillboxes, and underground barracks, I'd love to know what advanced technology they used to make habitable Swiss cheese out of a "semi-active" volcano.

I thought the same thing, I don't know how they pulled it off and Bradley didn't really say other than how Japan sent down an entire engineer battalion and used slave labor to do most of the work. They literally built a 7 story structure inside Suribachi itself. After it was all said and done the Japs built 16 miles worth of tunnels on the entire island. They even had a functioning hospital below ground capable of supporting 400 patients at one time. Some of the Marines even described how at night when they would try to rest they could hear the Japs running around underneath...some even blowing themselves up. Amazing stuff. Normandy didn't have crap on Iwo Jima.