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U.S. searches Iwo Jima for remains
A Marine who filmed the flag-raising is thought to have died in a cave there.
By ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published June 23, 2007
TOKYO - A U.S. search team on Iwo Jima is slashing its way through thick, thorny brush to find a cave where the Marine combat photographer who filmed the iconic World War II flag-raising is believed to have been killed by machine gunfire. It's the first American search of the remote Japanese island in nearly 60 years. The team is seeking the remains of Sgt. William H. Genaust and other Marines who died in the battle for Iwo Jima, a turning point in the war with Japan. "Our motto is 'Until they are home, ' " Lt. Col. Mark Brown of the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command told the Associated Press on Friday. Genaust, a combat photographer with the 28th Marines, filmed the raising of the flag atop Iwo Jima's Mount Suribachi on Feb. 23, 1945. He stood just feet from AP photographer Joe Rosenthal, whose photograph of the moment won a Pulitzer Prize and came to symbolize the war in the Pacific and the struggle of the Marines to capture Iwo Jima. Genaust died nine days later when he was hit by machine gunfire as he was helping fellow Marines secure a cave, said Johnnie Webb, a civilian official with JPAC. He was 38. A lead from a civilian led to the search for Genaust's remains. The seven-member JPAC team is also looking for "as many other American servicemen as they can find, " Brown said by telephone from Hickam Air Force Base in Hawaii. Some 250 U.S. troops are still missing from the Iwo Jima campaign, and the military is optimistic about finding Genaust and others, Brown said. The last JPAC team to search Iwo Jima recovered the remains of most of the American dead in 1948. The Marines officially took Iwo Jima on March 26, 1945, after a 31-day battle pitting some 100, 000 U.S. troops against 21, 200 Japanese. Some 6, 821 Americans were killed; only 1, 033 Japanese survived.
[Last modified June 23, 2007, 00:29:54]
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