Interesting Historical Artifact: Iwo Jima Flagraising on Film
Posted by
KTK
Here’s something I never even knew existed: live color film footage of the famous (second) flag-raising on Iwo Jima - the one that was captured in the legendary Joe Rosenthal photo and became the basis for the Iwo Jima memorial statue.
Apparently a film camera operator went up the mountain with Rosenthal and shot the flagraising while standing right next to him - so the film footage shows almost exactly the same image as Rosenthal’s famous photo. (Very little color film stock was used in WWII, but it did exist. This is the only color movie footage from the war that I’ve ever seen.) It’s been digitized and is now available on the Web (requires Ogg Vorbis media plugin).
Appropriate, perhaps, on the July 4 holiday.
The History Channel had a whole series on colour footage of the Second World War. It was pretty amazing how much there was, and how little I’d seen before.
Comment 7/5/2008
i must have seen a small snippet of that History Channel series once; footage that looked like it was shot through a truck window as American forces advanced on Berlin. i remember thinking the WW2-era German highway signs looked remarkably similar to those now standard across most of Europe.
Comment 7/7/2008
Historical Bookmarks…
Remmrit.com user has just tagged your post as historical!…
Trackback 8/28/2008