Photographer Rosenthal dies

Photographer Joe Rosenthal, whose iconic image of US troops raising the American flag on Iwo Jima became one of the most famous war photos of all time, has died at the age 94.

Mr Rosenthal, whose black and white picture taken on the Japanese island became a symbol of US determination to take back the Pacific rock by rock, died on Sunday at an assisted living center in Novato, California, north of San Francisco, his family said.

The shot of five Marines and a Navy Corpsman raising the flag on Mount Suribachi earned him the 1945 Pulitzer Prize and became the most widely reproduced picture in US history. It appeared on millions of stamps and Treasury Department posters selling war bonds and was reproduced as a sculpture at the US Marine Corps war memorial in Washington.

"That image, reproduced countless times around the world, is Joe's legacy to the world and will live on eternally, despite his passing," said Santiago Lyon, director of photography for The Associated Press, the organization for which Mr Rosenthal took the picture on February 23, 1945.

Over the years Mr Rosenthal had to fend off accusations that he had staged the shot, and even posed the Marines. He maintained he did no such thing and that he did not realise its power until after it was developed.

"It was the public's reaction to the photograph that made it iconic, not the photographer's intent," said Donald Winslow, editor of News Photographer magazine.

There was a large element of chance in the way the picture was created. Mr Rosenthal had been rejected for army service because of poor eyesight and missed the first raising of a smaller flag that day by a few hours.

Travelling with a squad of Marines who reached the 166-metre summit on the fifth day of fighting, he spotted the Marines and the corpsman raising a larger flag that could be seen from everywhere on the volcanic island.

Nearly 7,000 US soldiers died and some 20,000 were wounded in the 36-day battle between February and March 1945. Of the 22,000 Japanese troops on Iwo Jima when the fighting began, only 1,083 survived.

Born of Russian immigrants, Mr Rosenthal worked for the Associated Press during World War Two and then joined the San Francisco Chronicle in 1946, working there for 35 years until his retirement in 1981.

Mr Rosenthal estimated he made less than $10,000 from the picture. The AP gave him a $4,200 bonus in war bonds, and he won a $1,000 prize from a camera magazine. In addition he got about $700 for appearing on the radio.