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Home › Without Label › 2 American Indian Stories----Peter LaFarge & Ira Hayes : The Ballad of Ira Hayes--bios, histories of song, Indian history, WW2 history
2 American Indian Stories----Peter LaFarge & Ira Hayes : The Ballad of Ira Hayes--bios, histories of song, Indian history, WW2 history
Free Download 2 American Indian Stories----Peter LaFarge & Ira Hayes : The Ballad of Ira Hayes--bios, histories of song, Indian history, WW2 history at Here | by PNG and GIF Base
THERE'S AN AFFINITY OF CHARACTER AND SIMILARITY OF STORY IN THE BRIEF LIVES AND DEATHS OF IRA HAYES AND PETER LAFARGE.
LAFARGE LIKE IRA WAS A SUDDEN AND SWIFT RISING STAR WHO SEEMED UNABLE TO HANDLE, NOT INTERESTED, IN THE FAME AND FORTUNE OF THE NON-INDIAN SOCIETY AND WORLD.
IRA HAYES IS MAINLY REMEMBERED BY THIS SONG, WRITTEN BY MAN WHO IS NO LONGER, OR JUST BARELY, REMEMBER AS ITS WRITER, COMPOSER AND SINGER.
IRA HAYES THE BALLAD AND IRA HAYES THE PERSON HAVE BEEN LOST IN THE SANDS OF TIME WHILE SOMETHING RESEMBLING A MONUMENT, A GRAVESTONE, HAS BEEN PLACED OVER HIS SPIRIT.
PETER LAFARGE ALSO, A RISING STAR IN THE NEW YOUR CITY FOLK SCENE WHO IS BARELY RECALLED TODAY OTHER THAN PROVIDING THIS SONG FOR THE BIG NAME LIKES OF JOHNNY CASH, BOB DYLAN AND MANY MANY OTHERS
WHEN ONE READS OF THE FIGHTS FOR RIGHTS THAT BOTH IRA HAYES AND ANDPATER LAFARGE MADE, BATTLES AS BIG AND PASSIONATELY FELT AS AN IWO JIMA'S--AND HOW, AS USUAL, THE INDIAN IS ON THE WRONG SIDE OF THE LAW, THE BOOZE, THE IMPRIOSONMENT OF THE REZERVATIONS . . . HOW THE WHITES TAKE THE LAND AWAY THAT IS GOOD AND GIVE THE INDIANS THE FENCED IN AREAS OF POOR SOIL--ONE HOPES THESE TWO FIGHTERS HAVE FOUND A PEACEFUL PLACE TO LIVE AND DREAM THEIR PRIVATE DREAMS AND TO KNOW THAT FINALLY AN INDIGENOUS PERSON IS ELECTED THE HEAD OF A COUNTRY--EVO MORALES OF BOLIVIA. IN SOME WAY THESE TWO PERSONS CONTRIBUTED THROUGH THEIR SPIRITS AND GO ON LIVING IN THOSE SPIRITS THEY HELPED IN HOWEVER SMALL AND BLOODY WAY TO AWAKEN
THE BALLAD OF IRA HAYES WORDS & MUSIC & SINGING PETER LAFARGE
PETER LAFARGE AUTHOR OF THE BALLAD OF IRA HAYES In 1965 [sic] another Broadside songwriter "committed suicide." He was Peter La Farge, adopted son of Oliver La Farge, first winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Literature -- the book was "Laughing Boy," a sympathetic treatment of the Navajo Indians. The F.B.I. took an interest in Peter and began hounding him when he organized FAIR (Federation for American Indian Rights). Several months before he died, the F.B.I. raided his New York apartment at midnight. They scattered and tore up his papers; they put handcuffs on him and dragged him to Bellevue in his pajamas [sic]. They put pressure on Bellevue to declare him insane, but Bellevue could find nothing wrong and turned him loose.
Gordon Friesen, Broadside No. 133, Oct-Dec 1976, reprinted in Erwin Otto, "Das 'Topical Song Magazine' Broadside -- Ein Forum des Protests", in: Hans-Juergen Diller (editor), American Popular Culture, Anglistik & Englischunterricht, Heidelberg, 1985, p. 106
PETER LAFARGE'S COMPLETE DISCOGRAPHY INCOLUYDING COMPILATION LPS:
http://www.wirz.de/music/lafarfrm.htm
THE BALLAD OF PETER LAFARGE
Ira Hamilton Hayes Corporal, United States Marine Corps
Ira Hayes was a Pima Indian who enlisted in the United States Marine Corps early in World War II. He gained fame in the Pacific campaign when he, along with four fellow Marines and one Sailor, raised the US flag over Iwo Jima while the battle still raged for that island fortress. The act of raising the flag was captured by AP photographer Joe Rosenthal and became the image on the biggest-selling American postage stamp of all time.
Courtesy of the United States Marine Corps:
CORPORAL IRA HAMILTON HAYES, USMCR (DECEASED)
Ira Hamilton Hayes, participant in the famous flag raising on Iwo Jima, was a Pima Indian, born at Sacaton, Arizona, on 12 January 1923. In 1932, the family moved a few miles southward to Bapchule. Both Sacaton and Bapchule are located within the boundaries of the Gila River Indian Reservation in south central Arizona. Hayes left high school after completing two years of study. He served in the Civilian Conservation Corps in May and June of 1942, and then went to work as a carpenter.
On 26 August 1942, Ira Hayes enlisted in the Marine Corps Reserve at Phoenix for the duration of the National Emergency. Following boot camp at the Marine Corps Recruit Depot at San Diego, Hayes was assigned to the Parachute Training School at Camp Gillespie, Marine Corps Base, San Diego. Graduated one month later, the Arizonan was qualified as a parachutist on 30 November and promoted to private first class the next day. On 2 December, he joined Company B, 3d Parachute Battalion, Divisional Special Troops, 3d Marine Division, at Camp Elliott, California, with which he sailed for Noumea, New Caledonia, on 14 March 1943.
In April, Hayes' unit was redesignated Company K, 3d Parachute Battalion, 1st Marine Parachute Regiment. In October Hayes sailed for Vella Lavella, arriving on the 14th. Here, he took part in the campaign and occupation of that island until 3 December when he moved north to Bougainville, arriving on the 4th. The campaign there was already underway, but the parachutists had a full share of fighting before they left on 15 January 1944.
Hayes was ordered to return to the United States where he landed at San Diego on 14 February 1944, after slightly more than 11 months overseas and two campaigns. The parachute units were disbanded in February, and Hayes was transferred to Company E, 2d Battalion, 28th Marines, of the 5th Marine Division, then at Camp Pendleton, California.
In September, Hayes sailed with his company for Hawaii for more training. He sailed from Hawaii in January en route to Iwo Jima where he landed on D-day (19 February 1945) and remained during the fighting until 26 March. Then he embarked for Hawaii where he boarded a plane for the U.S. on 15 April. On the 19th, he joined Company C, 1st Headquarters Battalion, Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps, Washington, D.C.
On 10 May, Hayes, Private First Class Gagnon, Pharmacist's Mate Second Class Bradley, and Marine Technical Sergeant Keyes Beech, a combat correspondent, left on the bond selling tour. In Chicago, Hayes received orders directing his return to the 28th Marines. He arrived at Hilo, Hawaii, and rejoined Company E of the 29th on 28 May. Three weeks later, on 19 June, he was promoted to corporal.
CORPORAL IRA HAYES USMC 1946
With the end of the war, Corporal Hayes and his company left Hilo and landed at Sasebo, Japan, on 22 September to participate in the occupation of Japan. On 25 October, Corporal Hayes boarded his eleventh and last ship to return to his homeland for the third time. Landing at San Francisco on 9 November, he was honorably discharged on 1 December.
Corporal Hayes was awarded a Letter of Commendation with Commendation Ribbon by the Commanding General, Fleet Marine Force, Pacific, Lieutenant General Roy S. Geiger, for his "meritorious and efficient performance of duty while serving with a Marine infantry battalion during operations against the enemy on Vella Lavella and Bougainville, British Solomon Islands, from 15 August to 15 December 1943, and on Iwo Jima, Volcano Islands, from 19 February to 27 March 1945."
The list of the Corporal's decorations and medals includes the Commendation Ribbon with "V" combat device, Presidential Unit Citation with one star (for Iwo Jima), Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal with four stars (for Vella Lavella, Bougainville, Consolidation of the Northern Solomons, and Iwo Jima), American Campaign Medal, and the World War II Victory Medal.
LAST KNOWN FOTO OF CORPORAL IRA HAYES USMC, 1954
The former Marine died at Bapchule on 24 January 1955. He was buried on 2 February 1955 at Arlington National Cemetery, in Section 34, Plot 479A.
One of Washington's premier landmarks is the world's largest statue, an immense sculpture in bronze, weighing 100 tons and reaching a height of 110 feet. It depicts six Marines--each figure about 32 feet tall--hoisting an American flag on the island of Iwo Jima, a part of the prefecture of Tokyo, located in the Pacific Ocean 650 miles from the Japanese mainland.
The monument memorializes one of the final battles of the 20th century's Second World War and has become, in the words of an academician, "one of the most charged and powerful cultural symbols of patriotism to mainstream Americans." It was copied from a photograph made in February 1945 by Joe Rosenthal, an Associated Press photographer. The struggle ended a month or so later with more than 25,000 American Marines dead or wounded. The Japanese garrison of 22,000 was annihilated but for a few prisoners.
The flag-raising image, captured by Rosenthal in 1/400th of a second, had an adrenaline effect on a public tiring of war and haunted by fear that the approaching invasion of Japan would be Armageddon. Critics hailed the picture as a transcendent work of art. It inspired the sale of billions of dollars in war bonds and gave sculptor Felix de Weldon the blueprint for the huge statue that now looms alongside the Arlington National Cemetery. It made Rosenthal famous, brought sculptor de Weldon both fame and wealth, and gave the Marines a semi-religious institutional icon, a triumphant metaphor for the very soul of the Corps.
What has been lost in all this is any collective memory of the six boys who raised the flag and then, after an instant of notoriety, passed into the void of anonymity that, with few exceptions, awaits us all. Who were they? What happened to them?
Ira Hamilton Hayes PHOTO Ira Hayes was a Pima Indian who enlisted in the United States Marine Corps early in World War II. He gained fame in the Pacific campaign when he, along with four fellow Marines and one Sailor, raised the US flag over Iwo Jima while the battle still raged for that island fortress. The act of raising the flag was captured by AP photographer Joe Rosenthal and became the image on the biggest-selling American postage stamp of all time.
Courtesy of the United States Marine Corps:
CORPORAL IRA HAMILTON HAYES, USMCR (DECEASED)
IH Hayes PHOTO
Ira Hamilton Hayes, participant in the famous flag raising on Iwo Jima, was a Pima Indian, born at Sacaton, Arizona, on 12 January 1923. In 1932, the family moved a few miles southward to Bapchule. Both Sacaton and Bapchule are located within the boundaries of the Gila River Indian Reservation in south central Arizona. Hayes left high school after completing two years of study. He served in the Civilian Conservation Corps in May and June of 1942, and then went to work as a carpenter.
On 26 August 1942, Ira Hayes enlisted in the Marine Corps Reserve at Phoenix for the duration of the National Emergency. Following boot camp at the Marine Corps Recruit Depot at San Diego, Hayes was assigned to the Parachute Training School at Camp Gillespie, Marine Corps Base, San Diego. Graduated one month later, the Arizonan was qualified as a parachutist on 30 November and promoted to private first class the next day. On 2 December, he joined Company B, 3d Parachute Battalion, Divisional Special Troops, 3d Marine Division, at Camp Elliott, California, with which he sailed for Noumea, New Caledonia, on 14 March 1943.
In April, Hayes' unit was redesignated Company K, 3d Parachute Battalion, 1st Marine Parachute Regiment. In October Hayes sailed for Vella Lavella, arriving on the 14th. Here, he took part in the campaign and occupation of that island until 3 December when he moved north to Bougainville, arriving on the 4th. The campaign there was already underway, but the parachutists had a full share of fighting before they left on 15 January 1944.
Hayes was ordered to return to the United States where he landed at San Diego on 14 February 1944, after slightly more than 11 months overseas and two campaigns. The parachute units were disbanded in February, and Hayes was transferred to Company E, 2d Battalion, 28th Marines, of the 5th Marine Division, then at Camp Pendleton, California.
In September, Hayes sailed with his company for Hawaii for more training. He sailed from Hawaii in January en route to Iwo Jima where he landed on D-day (19 February 1945) and remained during the fighting until 26 March. Then he embarked for Hawaii where he boarded a plane for the U.S. on 15 April. On the 19th, he joined Company C, 1st Headquarters Battalion, Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps, Washington, D.C.
On 10 May, Hayes, Private First Class Gagnon, Pharmacist's Mate Second Class Bradley, and Marine Technical Sergeant Keyes Beech, a combat correspondent, left on the bond selling tour. In Chicago, Hayes received orders directing his return to the 28th Marines. He arrived at Hilo, Hawaii, and rejoined Company E of the 29th on 28 May. Three weeks later, on 19 June, he was promoted to corporal.
With the end of the war, Corporal Hayes and his company left Hilo and landed at Sasebo, Japan, on 22 September to participate in the occupation of Japan. On 25 October, Corporal Hayes boarded his eleventh and last ship to return to his homeland for the third time. Landing at San Francisco on 9 November, he was honorably discharged on 1 December.
Corporal Hayes was awarded a Letter of Commendation with Commendation Ribbon by the Commanding General, Fleet Marine Force, Pacific, Lieutenant General Roy S. Geiger, for his "meritorious and efficient performance of duty while serving with a Marine infantry battalion during operations against the enemy on Vella Lavella and Bougainville, British Solomon Islands, from 15 August to 15 December 1943, and on Iwo Jima, Volcano Islands, from 19 February to 27 March 1945."
The list of the Corporal's decorations and medals includes the Commendation Ribbon with "V" combat device, Presidential Unit Citation with one star (for Iwo Jima), Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal with four stars (for Vella Lavella, Bougainville, Consolidation of the Northern Solomons, and Iwo Jima), American Campaign Medal, and the World War II Victory Medal.
The former Marine died at Bapchule on 24 January 1955. He was buried on 2 February 1955 at Arlington National Cemetery, in Section 34, Plot 479A.
________________________________________
One of Washington's premier landmarks is the world's largest statue, an immense sculpture in bronze, weighing 100 tons and reaching a height of 110 feet. It depicts six Marines--each figure about 32 feet tall--hoisting an American flag on the island of Iwo Jima, a part of the prefecture of Tokyo, located in the Pacific Ocean 650 miles from the Japanese mainland.
The monument memorializes one of the final battles of the 20th century's Second World War and has become, in the words of an academician, "one of the most charged and powerful cultural symbols of patriotism to mainstream Americans." It was copied from a photograph made in February 1945 by Joe Rosenthal, an Associated Press photographer. The struggle ended a month or so later with more than 25,000 American Marines dead or wounded. The Japanese garrison of 22,000 was annihilated but for a few prisoners.
The flag-raising image, captured by Rosenthal in 1/400th of a second, had an adrenaline effect on a public tiring of war and haunted by fear that the approaching invasion of Japan would be Armageddon. Critics hailed the picture as a transcendent work of art. It inspired the sale of billions of dollars in war bonds and gave sculptor Felix de Weldon the blueprint for the huge statue that now looms alongside the Arlington National Cemetery. It made Rosenthal famous, brought sculptor de Weldon both fame and wealth, and gave the Marines a semi-religious institutional icon, a triumphant metaphor for the very soul of the Corps.
Raising the Flag At Iwo Jima WWII
PETER LAFARGE AUTHOR OF THE BALLAD OF IRA HAYES To order available recordings right from this site:
CDnow's Country/Folk section!
BUFFY SAINTE-MARIE:
Peter LaFarge wrote "The Ballad of Ira Hayes," which was a very important song about Indian life. His father, Oliver, was a well-known Indian scholar...
Robbie Woliver, Hoot! A 25-Year History of the Greenwich Village Music Scene, St. Martin's Press, 1986, p. 105.
DYLAN COVER OF PETER LAFARGE SONG
* The Ballad of Ira Hayes
(Jun 1, 1970, Columbia Studios, NYC, NY, released on "Dylan";
Grateful Dead rehearsals, San Rafael, CA, May 1987)
MOSES "MOE" ASCH:
Peter La Farge comes from Fountain Colorado, where he was raised as a cowboy on the Kane Ranch. His second home is Santa Fe New Mexico, where his father Oliver La Farge resides. The thirty two year old folk musician... was adopted... by the Tewa Tribe of the Hopi nation... Peter left school when he was sixteen, to sing and rodeo... In 1946 Josh White came through Pete's country, and stopped off to work with him. Much work with Josh, Big Bill Broonzy and a close friendship with Cisco Houston followed with the years...
LINER NOTES FOR "AS LONG AS THE GRASS SHALL GROW," FOLKWAYS FN 2532, 1962, reissued 1964.
On Oct 27, 1964, Peter LaFarge died of a stroke (official version; rumors of him committing suicide persist):
In 1965 [sic] another Broadside songwriter "committed suicide." He was Peter La Farge, adopted son of Oliver La Farge, first winner of the Pulitzer Prize for Literature -- the book was "Laughing Boy," a sympathetic treatment of the Navajo Indians. The F.B.I. took an interest in Peter and began hounding him when he organized FAIR (Federation for American Indian Rights). Several months before he died, the F.B.I. raided his New York apartment at midnight. They scattered and tore up his papers; they put handcuffs on him and dragged him to Bellevue in his pajamas [sic]. They put pressure on Bellevue to declare him insane, but Bellevue could find nothing wrong and turned him loose.
Gordon Friesen, Broadside No. 133, Oct-Dec 1976, reprinted in Erwin Otto, "Das 'Topical Song Magazine' Broadside -- Ein Forum des Protests", in: Hans-Juergen Diller (editor), American Popular Culture, Anglistik & Englischunterricht, Heidelberg, 1985, p. 106.
Ira Hamilton Hayes
Corporal, United States Marine Corps
Ira Hayes was a Pima Indian who enlisted in the United States Marine Corps early in World War II. He gained fame in the Pacific campaign when he, along with four fellow Marines and one Sailor, raised the US flag over Iwo Jima while the battle still raged for that island fortress. The act of raising the flag was captured by AP photographer Joe Rosenthal and became the image on the biggest-selling American postage stamp of all time.
________________________________________
Courtesy of the United States Marine Corps:
CORPORAL IRA HAMILTON HAYES, USMCR (DECEASED)
Ira Hamilton Hayes, participant in the famous flag raising on Iwo Jima, was a Pima Indian, born at Sacaton, Arizona, on 12 January 1923. In 1932, the family moved a few miles southward to Bapchule. Both Sacaton and Bapchule are located within the boundaries of the Gila River Indian Reservation in south central Arizona. Hayes left high school after completing two years of study. He served in the Civilian Conservation Corps in May and June of 1942, and then went to work as a carpenter.
On 26 August 1942, Ira Hayes enlisted in the Marine Corps Reserve at Phoenix for the duration of the National Emergency. Following boot camp at the Marine Corps Recruit Depot at San Diego, Hayes was assigned to the Parachute Training School at Camp Gillespie, Marine Corps Base, San Diego. Graduated one month later, the Arizonan was qualified as a parachutist on 30 November and promoted to private first class the next day. On 2 December, he joined Company B, 3d Parachute Battalion, Divisional Special Troops, 3d Marine Division, at Camp Elliott, California, with which he sailed for Noumea, New Caledonia, on 14 March 1943.
In April, Hayes' unit was redesignated Company K, 3d Parachute Battalion, 1st Marine Parachute Regiment. In October Hayes sailed for Vella Lavella, arriving on the 14th. Here, he took part in the campaign and occupation of that island until 3 December when he moved north to Bougainville, arriving on the 4th. The campaign there was already underway, but the parachutists had a full share of fighting before they left on 15 January 1944.
Hayes was ordered to return to the United States where he landed at San Diego on 14 February 1944, after slightly more than 11 months overseas and two campaigns. The parachute units were disbanded in February, and Hayes was transferred to Company E, 2d Battalion, 28th Marines, of the 5th Marine Division, then at Camp Pendleton, California.
In September, Hayes sailed with his company for Hawaii for more training. He sailed from Hawaii in January en route to Iwo Jima where he landed on D-day (19 February 1945) and remained during the fighting until 26 March. Then he embarked for Hawaii where he boarded a plane for the U.S. on 15 April. On the 19th, he joined Company C, 1st Headquarters Battalion, Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps, Washington, D.C.
On 10 May, Hayes, Private First Class Gagnon, Pharmacist's Mate Second Class Bradley, and Marine Technical Sergeant Keyes Beech, a combat correspondent, left on the bond selling tour. In Chicago, Hayes received orders directing his return to the 28th Marines. He arrived at Hilo, Hawaii, and rejoined Company E of the 29th on 28 May. Three weeks later, on 19 June, he was promoted to corporal.
With the end of the war, Corporal Hayes and his company left Hilo and landed at Sasebo, Japan, on 22 September to participate in the occupation of Japan. On 25 October, Corporal Hayes boarded his eleventh and last ship to return to his homeland for the third time. Landing at San Francisco on 9 November, he was honorably discharged on 1 December.
Corporal Hayes was awarded a Letter of Commendation with Commendation Ribbon by the Commanding General, Fleet Marine Force, Pacific, Lieutenant General Roy S. Geiger, for his "meritorious and efficient performance of duty while serving with a Marine infantry battalion during operations against the enemy on Vella Lavella and Bougainville, British Solomon Islands, from 15 August to 15 December 1943, and on Iwo Jima, Volcano Islands, from 19 February to 27 March 1945."
The list of the Corporal's decorations and medals includes the Commendation Ribbon with "V" combat device, Presidential Unit Citation with one star (for Iwo Jima), Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal with four stars (for Vella Lavella, Bougainville, Consolidation of the Northern Solomons, and Iwo Jima), American Campaign Medal, and the World War II Victory Medal.
The former Marine died at Bapchule on 24 January 1955. He was buried on 2 February 1955 at Arlington National Cemetery, in Section 34, Plot 479A.
________________________________________
________________________________________
One Moment of Glory
By Richard Harwood
Sunday , June 18, 2000
FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS
By James Bradley with Ron Powers
Bantam. 376 pp. $24.95
________________________________________
One of Washington's premier landmarks is the world's largest statue, an immense sculpture in bronze, weighing 100 tons and reaching a height of 110 feet. It depicts six Marines--each figure about 32 feet tall--hoisting an American flag on the island of Iwo Jima, a part of the prefecture of Tokyo, located in the Pacific Ocean 650 miles from the Japanese mainland.
The monument memorializes one of the final battles of the 20th century's Second World War and has become, in the words of an academician, "one of the most charged and powerful cultural symbols of patriotism to mainstream Americans." It was copied from a photograph made in February 1945 by Joe Rosenthal, an Associated Press photographer. The struggle ended a month or so later with more than 25,000 American Marines dead or wounded. The Japanese garrison of 22,000 was annihilated but for a few prisoners.
The flag-raising image, captured by Rosenthal in 1/400th of a second, had an adrenaline effect on a public tiring of war and haunted by fear that the approaching invasion of Japan would be Armageddon. Critics hailed the picture as a transcendent work of art. It inspired the sale of billions of dollars in war bonds and gave sculptor Felix de Weldon the blueprint for the huge statue that now looms alongside the Arlington National Cemetery. It made Rosenthal famous, brought sculptor de Weldon both fame and wealth, and gave the Marines a semi-religious institutional icon, a triumphant metaphor for the very soul of the Corps.
What has been lost in all this is any collective memory of the six boys who raised the flag and then, after an instant of notoriety, passed into the void of anonymity that, with few exceptions, awaits us all. Who were they? What happened to them?
The most recent of the many books inspired by the battle and by Rosenthal's sublime image is Flags of Our Fathers, by James Bradley. It is described in a jacket blurb by the prolific military historian Stephen Ambrose as "the best battle book I have ever read." Others may view it in that light, but that was not the author's purpose. His principal aim was to rescue these forgotten boys--one of them his father--and transform them from "anonymous representative figures" into individuals.
His profiles of them resemble a cast from the paintings of Norman Rockwell, unfamous, un-celebrified, "ordinary" Americans: --Mike Strank, an immigrant from Czechoslovakia, brought to America in infancy by his father, who had found work digging coal in Pennsylvania for Bethlehem Steel.
--Ira Hayes, a "non-citizen" and immigrant of sorts in his native land, a Pima Indian born on a small cotton farm in the Gila River reservation in Arizona--geography his people had occupied for more than 2,000 years.
--Harlon Block, born on a farm in the Rio Grande valley of Texas, a superb athlete raised in a pacifist Seventh Day Adventist home where killing and even the possession of weapons were forsworn. "It is doubtful," Bradley writes, "that in his short life Harlon Block ever kissed a girl."
--Franklin Runyon Sousley, a good old hillbilly boy from Eastern Kentucky, a practical joker who, it was said, would "fight a running sawmill." His father died when he was 8 years old, leaving him as the man in the family.
--Rene Gagnon, child of French Canadian mill workers in Manchester, N.H., a shy, self-conscious "mama's boy" who "never chummed with the guys" and, like his parents, faced a lifetime in a factory until the Marines got him in 1943.
--Jack Bradley, father of the author of this book, an altar boy from a devout Catholic household in Antigo, Wis. His high school ambition (fulfilled after the war) was to be a funeral director, a counselor and friend to the bereaved. He joined the Navy to
avoid combat, wound up as a medical corpsman with the Marines and came home with a Navy Cross, an honor unrevealed to his family until after his death.
They were teenagers, Bradley writes, "scarcely out of boyhood when they enlisted. Their lives up till then had been kids' lives: hunting, fishing, paper routes, the movies, adventure programs on radio . . . first wary contacts with girls . . . Most of them were poor. The Great Depression ran through their lives." They grew up fast in the war, discovering that doing their duty to God and country involved unimagined pain, terrors and awful deeds.
On Feb. 23, 1945, the fifth day of the battle, they raised the second of two flags planted that morning on the summit of Mount Suribachi, an extinct volcano that overlooked the landing beaches and had been made by the Japanese into a hellish nest of gun emplacements, pillboxes, fortified caves, tunnels and storage depots.
A week later their outfit, Easy Company, Second Battalion, 28th Marines, joined an assault on another ugly, heavily fortified terrain. They came under heavy sniper fire. Mike Strank, now a sergeant, squad leader and father figure to Hayes, Block and Sousley, led them to cover under a rocky outcropping. A shell, almost certainly from an American destroyer lying offshore, exploded and tore out Strank's heart. Harlon Block took over the squad. A few hours later a mortar round sliced him from groin to neck. As his intestines poured out on the ground he cried out: "They killed me."
Easy Company moved on, losing men daily. Jack Bradley, the corpsman, was wounded by shrapnel and flown out to a hospital in Guam. Sousley was shot by a sniper. Someone shouted: "How ya doin'?" Sousley replied: "Not bad. I don't feel anything." Then he fell and died.
Ira Hayes left Iwo Jima unwounded and nine months later was a civilian again, leaving behind in a mass graveyard on the island the best friends he ever had--Mike and Harlon and Franklin. Back home he found menial jobs on the reservation--cotton picking and other day labor work. He became a drifter, drank a lot, was in and out of jail and died in an abandoned hut on the reservation after an all-night poker game in January 1955, just short of 10 years after the flag-raising. He was 32 and got the biggest funeral in the history of Arizona.
Rene Gagnon survived the war unharmed, tried to exploit his brief fame as a flag-raiser but never "made it" out of the New Hampshire rut into which he was born. He was a janitor at a tourist home when he died in 1979 at the age of 54. Jack Bradley died in 1994, patriarch of a large family, revered town father in Antigo and proprietor of one of the largest funeral businesses in Wisconsin.
None of their names is on the monument. You can find out more about them in James Bradley's fine book.
Richard Harwood, a veteran of the Iwo Jima battle, is a former reporter, editor and columnist for The Washington Post.
________________________________________
Photo Courtesy of Ruccell C. Jacobs, August 2006
Gravesite photo courtesy of Ron Williams
Following the war, unable to cope with his new-found fame, Ira Hayes turned to alcohol. Unable to keep a steady job, he was working as a cotton-picker on an Arizona Indian Reservation when he was found dead from alcohol and exposure on January 24, 1955. He now lies in Section 34 of Arlington National Cemetery.
HAYES, IRA HAMILTON
CPL USMCR
DATE OF BIRTH: 01/12/1923
DATE OF DEATH: 01/24/1955
BURIED AT: SECTION 34
ARLINGTON NATIONAL CEMETERY
Webmaster: Michael Robert Patterson
________________________________________
Page Updated: 20 May 2001 Updated: 24 November 2001 Updated: 22 November 2003 Updated: 21 August 2006
Ira Hayes b. January 12, 1923 Sacaton, Arizona d. January 24, 1955 Bapchule, Arizona
Ira Hayes was a Pima Indian. When he enlisted in the Marine Corps, he had hardly ever been off the Reservation. His Chief told him to be an "Honorable Warrior" and bring honor upon his family. Ira was a dedicated Marine. Quiet and steady, he was admired by his fellow Marines who fought alongside him in three Pacific battles. When Ira learned that President Roosevelt wanted him and the other survivors to come back to the US to raise money on the 7th Bond Tour, he was horrified. To Ira, the heroes of Iwo Jima, those deserving honor, were his "good buddies" who died there. At the White House, President Truman told Ira, "You are an American hero." But Ira didn't feel pride. As he later lamented, "How could I feel like a hero when only five men in my platoon of 45 survived, when only 27 men in my company of 250 managed to escape death or injury?" The Bond Tour was an ordeal for Ira. He couldn't understand or accept the adulation . . . "It was supposed to be soft duty, but I couldn't take it. Everywhere we went people shoved drinks in our hands and said 'You're a Hero!' We knew we hadn't done that much
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Ira Hamilton Hayes
Corporal, United States Marine Corps
Ira Hamilton Hayes PHOTO Ira Hayes was a Pima Indian who enlisted in the United States Marine Corps early in World War II. He gained fame in the Pacific campaign when he, along with four fellow Marines and one Sailor, raised the US flag over Iwo Jima while the battle still raged for that island fortress. The act of raising the flag was captured by AP photographer Joe Rosenthal and became the image on the biggest-selling American postage stamp of all time. Courtesy of the United States Marine Corps:
CORPORAL IRA HAMILTON HAYES, USMCR (DECEASED)
IH Hayes PHOTO
Ira Hamilton Hayes, participant in the famous flag raising on Iwo Jima, was a Pima Indian, born at Sacaton, Arizona, on 12 January 1923. In 1932, the family moved a few miles southward to Bapchule. Both Sacaton and Bapchule are located within the boundaries of the Gila River Indian Reservation in south central Arizona. Hayes left high school after completing two years of study. He served in the Civilian Conservation Corps in May and June of 1942, and then went to work as a carpenter.
On 26 August 1942, Ira Hayes enlisted in the Marine Corps Reserve at Phoenix for the duration of the National Emergency. Following boot camp at the Marine Corps Recruit Depot at San Diego, Hayes was assigned to the Parachute Training School at Camp Gillespie, Marine Corps Base, San Diego. Graduated one month later, the Arizonan was qualified as a parachutist on 30 November and promoted to private first class the next day. On 2 December, he joined Company B, 3d Parachute Battalion, Divisional Special Troops, 3d Marine Division, at Camp Elliott, California, with which he sailed for Noumea, New Caledonia, on 14 March 1943.
In April, Hayes' unit was redesignated Company K, 3d Parachute Battalion, 1st Marine Parachute Regiment. In October Hayes sailed for Vella Lavella, arriving on the 14th. Here, he took part in the campaign and occupation of that island until 3 December when he moved north to Bougainville, arriving on the 4th. The campaign there was already underway, but the parachutists had a full share of fighting before they left on 15 January 1944.
Hayes was ordered to return to the United States where he landed at San Diego on 14 February 1944, after slightly more than 11 months overseas and two campaigns. The parachute units were disbanded in February, and Hayes was transferred to Company E, 2d Battalion, 28th Marines, of the 5th Marine Division, then at Camp Pendleton, California.
In September, Hayes sailed with his company for Hawaii for more training. He sailed from Hawaii in January en route to Iwo Jima where he landed on D-day (19 February 1945) and remained during the fighting until 26 March. Then he embarked for Hawaii where he boarded a plane for the U.S. on 15 April. On the 19th, he joined Company C, 1st Headquarters Battalion, Headquarters, U.S. Marine Corps, Washington, D.C.
On 10 May, Hayes, Private First Class Gagnon, Pharmacist's Mate Second Class Bradley, and Marine Technical Sergeant Keyes Beech, a combat correspondent, left on the bond selling tour. In Chicago, Hayes received orders directing his return to the 28th Marines. He arrived at Hilo, Hawaii, and rejoined Company E of the 29th on 28 May. Three weeks later, on 19 June, he was promoted to corporal.
With the end of the war, Corporal Hayes and his company left Hilo and landed at Sasebo, Japan, on 22 September to participate in the occupation of Japan. On 25 October, Corporal Hayes boarded his eleventh and last ship to return to his homeland for the third time. Landing at San Francisco on 9 November, he was honorably discharged on 1 December.
Corporal Hayes was awarded a Letter of Commendation with Commendation Ribbon by the Commanding General, Fleet Marine Force, Pacific, Lieutenant General Roy S. Geiger, for his "meritorious and efficient performance of duty while serving with a Marine infantry battalion during operations against the enemy on Vella Lavella and Bougainville, British Solomon Islands, from 15 August to 15 December 1943, and on Iwo Jima, Volcano Islands, from 19 February to 27 March 1945."
The list of the Corporal's decorations and medals includes the Commendation Ribbon with "V" combat device, Presidential Unit Citation with one star (for Iwo Jima), Asiatic-Pacific Campaign Medal with four stars (for Vella Lavella, Bougainville, Consolidation of the Northern Solomons, and Iwo Jima), American Campaign Medal, and the World War II Victory Medal.
The former Marine died at Bapchule on 24 January 1955. He was buried on 2 February 1955 at Arlington National Cemetery, in Section 34, Plot 479A.
Raising the Flag At Iwo Jima WWII
One Moment of Glory
By Richard Harwood
Sunday , June 18, 2000
FLAGS OF OUR FATHERS
By James Bradley with Ron Powers
Bantam. 376 pp. $24.95
Flags of Our Fathers
One of Washington's premier landmarks is the world's largest statue, an immense sculpture in bronze, weighing 100 tons and reaching a height of 110 feet. It depicts six Marines--each figure about 32 feet tall--hoisting an American flag on the island of Iwo Jima, a part of the prefecture of Tokyo, located in the Pacific Ocean 650 miles from the Japanese mainland.
The monument memorializes one of the final battles of the 20th century's Second World War and has become, in the words of an academician, "one of the most charged and powerful cultural symbols of patriotism to mainstream Americans." It was copied from a photograph made in February 1945 by Joe Rosenthal, an Associated Press photographer. The struggle ended a month or so later with more than 25,000 American Marines dead or wounded. The Japanese garrison of 22,000 was annihilated but for a few prisoners.
The flag-raising image, captured by Rosenthal in 1/400th of a second, had an adrenaline effect on a public tiring of war and haunted by fear that the approaching invasion of Japan would be Armageddon. Critics hailed the picture as a transcendent work of art. It inspired the sale of billions of dollars in war bonds and gave sculptor Felix de Weldon the blueprint for the huge statue that now looms alongside the Arlington National Cemetery. It made Rosenthal famous, brought sculptor de Weldon both fame and wealth, and gave the Marines a semi-religious institutional icon, a triumphant metaphor for the very soul of the Corps.
What has been lost in all this is any collective memory of the six boys who raised the flag and then, after an instant of notoriety, passed into the void of anonymity that, with few exceptions, awaits us all. Who were they? What happened to them?
The most recent of the many books inspired by the battle and by Rosenthal's sublime image is Flags of Our Fathers, by James Bradley. It is described in a jacket blurb by the prolific military historian Stephen Ambrose as "the best battle book I have ever read." Others may view it in that light, but that was not the author's purpose. His principal aim was to rescue these forgotten boys--one of them his father--and transform them from "anonymous representative figures" into individuals.
His profiles of them resemble a cast from the paintings of Norman Rockwell, unfamous, un-celebrified, "ordinary" Americans: --Mike Strank, an immigrant from Czechoslovakia, brought to America in infancy by his father, who had found work digging coal in Pennsylvania for Bethlehem Steel.
--Ira Hayes, a "non-citizen" and immigrant of sorts in his native land, a Pima Indian born on a small cotton farm in the Gila River reservation in Arizona--geography his people had occupied for more than 2,000 years.
--Harlon Block, born on a farm in the Rio Grande valley of Texas, a superb athlete raised in a pacifist Seventh Day Adventist home where killing and even the possession of weapons were forsworn. "It is doubtful," Bradley writes, "that in his short life Harlon Block ever kissed a girl."
--Franklin Runyon Sousley, a good old hillbilly boy from Eastern Kentucky, a practical joker who, it was said, would "fight a running sawmill." His father died when he was 8 years old, leaving him as the man in the family.
--Rene Gagnon, child of French Canadian mill workers in Manchester, N.H., a shy, self-conscious "mama's boy" who "never chummed with the guys" and, like his parents, faced a lifetime in a factory until the Marines got him in 1943.
--Jack Bradley, father of the author of this book, an altar boy from a devout Catholic household in Antigo, Wis. His high school ambition (fulfilled after the war) was to be a funeral director, a counselor and friend to the bereaved. He joined the Navy to
avoid combat, wound up as a medical corpsman with the Marines and came home with a Navy Cross, an honor unrevealed to his family until after his death.
They were teenagers, Bradley writes, "scarcely out of boyhood when they enlisted. Their lives up till then had been kids' lives: hunting, fishing, paper routes, the movies, adventure programs on radio . . . first wary contacts with girls . . . Most of them were poor. The Great Depression ran through their lives." They grew up fast in the war, discovering that doing their duty to God and country involved unimagined pain, terrors and awful deeds.
On Feb. 23, 1945, the fifth day of the battle, they raised the second of two flags planted that morning on the summit of Mount Suribachi, an extinct volcano that overlooked the landing beaches and had been made by the Japanese into a hellish nest of gun emplacements, pillboxes, fortified caves, tunnels and storage depots.
A week later their outfit, Easy Company, Second Battalion, 28th Marines, joined an assault on another ugly, heavily fortified terrain. They came under heavy sniper fire. Mike Strank, now a sergeant, squad leader and father figure to Hayes, Block and Sousley, led them to cover under a rocky outcropping. A shell, almost certainly from an American destroyer lying offshore, exploded and tore out Strank's heart. Harlon Block took over the squad. A few hours later a mortar round sliced him from groin to neck. As his intestines poured out on the ground he cried out: "They killed me."
Easy Company moved on, losing men daily. Jack Bradley, the corpsman, was wounded by shrapnel and flown out to a hospital in Guam. Sousley was shot by a sniper. Someone shouted: "How ya doin'?" Sousley replied: "Not bad. I don't feel anything." Then he fell and died.
Ira Hayes left Iwo Jima unwounded and nine months later was a civilian again, leaving behind in a mass graveyard on the island the best friends he ever had--Mike and Harlon and Franklin. Back home he found menial jobs on the reservation--cotton picking and other day labor work. He became a drifter, drank a lot, was in and out of jail and died in an abandoned hut on the reservation after an all-night poker game in January 1955, just short of 10 years after the flag-raising. He was 32 and got the biggest funeral in the history of Arizona.
Rene Gagnon survived the war unharmed, tried to exploit his brief fame as a flag-raiser but never "made it" out of the New Hampshire rut into which he was born. He was a janitor at a tourist home when he died in 1979 at the age of 54. Jack Bradley died in 1994, patriarch of a large family, revered town father in Antigo and proprietor of one of the largest funeral businesses in Wisconsin.
None of their names is on the monument. You can find out more about them in James Bradley's fine book.
Richard Harwood, a veteran of the Iwo Jima battle, is a former reporter, editor and columnist for The Washington Post.
IH Hayes Gravesite PHOTO
Photo Courtesy of Ruccell C. Jacobs, August 2006
Ira Hayes' Gravesite
Gravesite photo courtesy of Ron Williams
Following the war, unable to cope with his new-found fame, Ira Hayes turned to alcohol. Unable to keep a steady job, he was working as a cotton-picker on an Arizona Indian Reservation when he was found dead from alcohol and exposure on January 24, 1955. He now lies in Section 34 of Arlington National Cemetery.
HAYES, IRA HAMILTON
CPL USMCR
DATE OF BIRTH: 01/12/1923
DATE OF DEATH: 01/24/1955
BURIED AT: SECTION 34
ARLINGTON NATIONAL CEMETERY
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The original raising of the flag on Mount Suribachi, Feb 23, 1945 (Louis Lowery)
Many Americans will have heard of Ira Hayes, the Pima Indian who with his five mates in the Marine Corps raised the United States flag on Mount Suribachi on the island of Iwo Jima. He was in the photograph, now world-famous, taken by Joe Rosenthal. But Ira Hayes died of acute alcoholism in a cotton field on the Pima reservation on a night in January 1955. He lay all night on the cold ground and death was attributed to "exposure." What had happened in the ten years intervening since the dramatic moment on Mount Suribachi?
On November 12, 1953, the Arizona Republic, the Phoenix morning newspaper, reported that Hayes spent the previous night in jail on a drunk-and-disorderly charge. The reporter did some digging in the files, and found that this was the forty-second occasion that Hayes had been arrested on such a charge. There would be still other arrests between November, 1953, and January, 1955. He had served throughout the South Pacific, fighting at Vella Lavella and Bougainville before coming up to Iwo Jima, where he served for thirty-six days and came out unwounded. After the flag-raising incident he and two of his buddies were brought back to the United States to travel extensively in support of the seventh war loan. One of these buddies reported that Hayes refused to be leader of a platoon because, as he explained, "I'd have to tell other men to go and get killed, and I'd rather do it myself." He was reluctant to return home, but he was given no choice. That started a round of speaking engagements, parades, ticker tape -- and people offering hospitality. The hospitality, unfortunately, invariably included free liquor, and Ira drank greedily. It was the quickest way to blur the painful, heedless publicity to which he was subjected. After his discharge he went home to Arizona, in the district called Bapchule. After the excitement of war and the hectic round of living which he had just experienced, Hayes' Indian home was not a place in which he could settle down at once. His was no longer a self-sufficient family, such as Hayes might have known in his own childhood, which certainly his ancestors had known before him. Without adequate water to grow crops, with landholdings reduced beyond any hope of economic livelihood even if there had been water, it was not a place for a returning warrior to rest and mend. Too many other mouths depended on the food he would eat. With the help of the relocation program of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, he went to Chicago and found employment with the International Harvester Company. For a while things went well with him, then he began drinking again. He was picked up on Skid Row in Chicago, dirty and shoeless, and sent to jail. The Chicago Sun-Times discovered who he was, got him out of jail, and raised a fund for his rehabilitation. A job was secured for him in Los Angeles, where it was hoped that he might make a fresh start. Many organizations, including church groups, helped out. Hayes thanked everybody gratefully, and said, "I know I'm cured of drinking now." But in less than a week he was arrested by Los Angeles police on the old charge. When he returned to Phoenix he received no hero's welcome. He told the reporter who met him: "I guess I'm just no good. I've had a lot of chances, but just when things started looking good I get that craving for whisky and foul up. I'm going back home for a while. Maybe after I'm around my family I'll be able to figure things out." But the family home still did not have the answer. Across the road and across the fence which marks the Pima reservation, water runs in irrigation ditches. The desert is green with cotton, barley, wheat, alfalfa, and citrus fruits, pasturage for sheep and cattle. But the water and the green fields are on the white man's side of the reservation fence. He tried once, in 1950, to plead the case of his people before government officials in Washington. He asked "for freedom for the Pima Indians. They want to manage their own affairs, and cease being wards of federal government." But what he was asking had become infinitely complicated. It involved acts of Congress, court decrees, a landowners' agreement, operation and maintenance requirements. So complicated had it become that the lawyers and the engineers and the administrators hired by the government had succeeded only in reducing by half the acreage which the Pima Indians, in their simple way, had cultivated, on which they had grown surpluses of grain to sell to hungry white men. Ira Hayes, coming back home, looked at the mud-and-wattle house, the ramada standing to one side, a few poor outbuildings, and knew that he would not find the answer there. He found it on the cold ground in a cotton field.
Harold E. Fey & D'Arcy McNickle, Indians & Other Americans (revised edition), New York, 1970, pp. 45-48
(March 9) Joe Rosenthal landed on Guam on that day, and inadvertently created the myth that his now-famous photograph was "staged." He got his first look at The Photograph from the base's picture pool coordinator, Murray Befler, who handed him an 11-by-14 print. As the two men stood chatting about the image, another man from the base walked up holding a print of the subsequent, "gung-ho" picture.
"I remember talking to him," Rosenthal later recounted, "and remember being asked if I posed it, and I said, 'Yes, yes, I had to work on them, as a matter of fact, to get up there because they were all tired and dirty and they were still aware that there were caves around and there were occasional pistol and gunshots into the cave openings." This conversation would haunt Rosenthal for decades to come. Some of the correspondents listening to him assumed that he was talking not about the "gung-ho" photograph, but about the previous frame, the one that was now famous. Soon a false and damaging slur was making the rounds: that the replacement-flag photograph, now universally understood as the only flagraising photograph, was bogus; staged. (Lou Lowery's shot of the original raising, delayed in its transmission to the United States, never made an impact on the public consciousness.) The slur accelerated on the jealousy of some rival photographers, who were only too happy to see questions raised about the photo that had eclipsed them all, and on the indifference of the news media about checking its facts. Time Magazine, on its radio program, "Time Views the News," broadcast the "staged" interpretation of the photograph without bothering to verify the rumor. As soon as he arrived back in the States, Joe Rosenthal did his best to set the record straight, and his wire service, the Associated Press, demanded and received a public apology from Time about the error. It would be the first of many false claims, followed by press apologies. Joe Rosenthal's 1/400th-second exposure would bring him nearly as much frustration in life as it brought satisfaction.
James Bradley, excerpt from his forthcoming book to be published by Bantam, 1999. Used by kind permission of the author.
As for the mechanics of the picture, "a lot of accidental things helped," Joe [Rosenthal] says. "The wind shifting the flag the way it did, the strained position of the men and the man holding the base, all contributed to the action and the drama of the picture. Even the light -- it happened to be the right time of day to give it a dramatic lighting -- and the chewed terrain around it- I'm not enough of an artist to be able to pose a thing like that."
It was reported at one time that the picture was posed, but news reel shoots show that the action never stopped from the time the men started raising the pole until it was up.
It is true that after it was up Joe shot a posed picture. Joe got some marines to stand around the flag and cheer. When he received a cable of congratulations from his office, he thought they were talking about the posed picture, and didn't know until he got back to Guam which picture was causing all the comment.
St. Louis Dispatch Thurs. April 19, 1945; kindly provided by James Bradley.
Gather round me, people, there's a story I would tell, About a brave young Indian you should remember well; From the land of the Pima Indians, a proud and noble band, Who farmed the Phoenix Valley in Arizona land. Down their ditches for a thousand years the waters grew Ira's people's crops, Till the white man stole their water rights and their sparklin' water stopped. Now Ira's folks grew hungry, and their farms grew crops of weeds. When war came, Ira volunteered and forgot the white man's greed.
CHORUS: Call him drunken Ira Hayes -- He won't answer anymore, Not the whiskey-drinkin' Indian, Not the Marine who went to war. Well, they battled up Iwo Jima hill -- two hundred and fifty men, But only twenty-seven lived -- to walk back down again; When the fight was over -- and Old Glory raised Among the men who held it high was the Indian -- Ira Hayes. Ira Hayes returned a hero -- celebrated through the land, He was wined and speeched and honored -- everybody shook his hand; But he was just a Pima Indian -- no water, no home, no chance; At home nobody cared what Ira done -- and when do the Indians dance? Then Ira started drinkin' hard -- jail was often his home; They let him raise the flag and lower it -- as you would throw a dog a bone; He died drunk early one morning -- alone in the land he'd fought to save; Two inches of water in a lonely ditch -- was the grave for Ira Hayes. CODA: Yea, call him drunken Ira Hayes, But his land is just as dry, And the ghost is lying thirsty In the ditch where Ira died.
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