Once presented with new evidence, Rene Gagnon, a powerful local connection to perhaps the most famous photograph in American history, suspected that the man standing in front of his father had been misidentified.
On Thursday, after a long investigation by the Marines and the Smithsonian Channel, Gagnon’s belief was confirmed with the announcement that one of the six flag raisers at Iwo Jima, Navy hospital corpsman John Bradley, was not in the picture, and a Marine named Harold Schultz was.
There has never been any doubt that Gagnon’s father, Rene Gagnon Sr. of Manchester, was in the Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph, taken by Joe Rosenthal of the Associated Press, on Feb. 23, 1945. Gagnon grew up in Manchester and has lived in Concord for 25 years.
The picture came to symbolize the sacrifice made by the Marines as they fought the Japanese during the final year of World War II.
But recent questions raised by amateur investigators, the media and, finally, the Marines themselves forced officials to take a second look at the names forever attached to the event.
The Smithsonian Channel will broadcast its findings on July 3. Filmmakers visited Gagnon Jr. at his son’s Manchester home last month and planned to include him in the documentary.
“He wasn’t there,” Gagnon, referring to Bradley, told the Monitor, before filming began that day. “The Marines want to put an end to this conflict. If they weren’t going to budge, they wouldn’t be here.”
Gagnon was unavailable for comment Thursday, and the Monitor was not allowed to view the filming of his interview last month.
But Gagnon has made his feelings clear when it comes to Bradley. Long before this issue surfaced, Gagnon was unhappy with the way his father had been portrayed in a best selling book on the Iwo event, written by Bradley’s son, James Bradley, in 2000. The book, Flags of our Fathers, was made into a film, directed by Clint Eastwood, in 2006.
Gagnon complained that James Bradley had heaped too much praise and credit onto his father, while the elder Gagnon was portrayed as an angry man, made bitter by promises of post-war employment that never materialized. Gagnon said his father was made to look like an opportunist trying to exploit his fame, someone who in the end had trouble holding a job.
“It was a good historical document about lives and times and people,” Gagnon told the Monitor in May. “But it sort of diminishes my father’s character, while boosting his father’s credibility.”
News that John Bradley might not have been in the photo – although it’s clear he was on the island that day, was honored for his bravery and was involved in an earlier flag raising – added to Gagnon’s frustration, especially since James Bradley had been paid handsomely for his book and the Eastwood movie.
Gagnon even speculated that Bradley knew at some point that his father had not been part of the famous Rosenthal photo, but misled the public for financial gain.
“I’m not trying to deny Bradley was there, I’m not trying to put his father down in the least,” Gagnon said in May. “But when you’re going to portray this in a book about something of epic proportions, it’s like, ‘Hey, pal, you’re barking up the wrong tree. Your father wasn’t even in the photo.’ ”
Bradley, who lives in Westchester County, near New York City, did not return a phone call Thursday. Last month in a phone interview he said he no longer believed that his father was in the picture, but he did nothing to deceive the public earlier.
The photo was taken atop Mount Suribachi, a few days after Marines had landed on the beach and a month before the battle actually ended. Nearly 7,000 Marines and 20,000 Japanese were killed, fighting over a small island made of volcanic ash.
Three of the six men shown died soon after, and the photo was published in newspapers across the country, pumping the war-weary American public with patriotic feelings more than three years after the attack on Pearl Harbor.
Then, two years ago, two curious, detailed-oriented men broke down film and photos, a columnist from Nebraska gave them credibility by publishing their story and the Marines took notice.
Retired Marine Col. Matt Morgan of Virginia worked with the Smithsonian Channel to uncover the truth, and was part of the crew that visited Gagnon in Manchester last month
He said by phone Thursday that improved technology, such as ultra high definition transfer, clearly revealed enough “facial recognition” to determine that the man identified as Bradley, second from the right in the photo and blocking all but Gagnon’s knee and helmet, was actually Franklin Sousley.
Sousley had been named as the man second from the left, but an analysis of his rifle sling and the height of his rifle, Morgan said, proved that that Marine was Harold Schultz, a California man who never said a word publicly that he, not Bradley, should have been in the photo caption.
“I could not fathom that after 70 years no one had ever identified him,” Morgan said by phone.
Morgan added that James Bradley declined to be interviewed for the upcoming documentary. “I was extremely disappointed,” Morgan said. “We approached him several times.”
Meanwhile, Gagnon said he might write his own book once the documentary setting the record straight runs next month.
“I’d like to tell my story,” Gagnon said, “the one about my father.”