NEWS FLASH: “The Marine Corps acknowledged on Wednesday that for 74 years, it had misidentified one of the six fighting men who appeared in the Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph by Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal.
The admission came after three historians, using film footage from atop Mount Suribachi and photos taken by other soldiers who were there, concluded that Cpl. Harold “Pie” Keller — not Pfc. Rene Gagnon — was one of the flag-raisers in the photograph.
The findings of historians Stephen Foley, Dustin Spence and Brent Westemeyer were confirmed by a special investigative board convened by the Marines and by investigators from the FBI’s Digital Evidence Laboratory.
“Without the initiative and contributions of both private historians devoted to preservation of our history and the FBI’s Digital Evidence Laboratory, the Marine Corps would not have this opportunity to expand on the historical record of the second flag raising on Mount Suribachi,” the Marine Corps said in a statement.
The addition of Keller’s name comes three years after an earlier Marine Corps inquiry concluded that Pfc. Harold Schultz was one of the six flag-raisers, not Navy hospital corpsman John Bradley as had been believed for seven decades.”
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