Posts Tagged ‘Joe Rosenthal’

23
Feb

It’s the anniversary of the Iwo Jima flag-raising. No, not that one. The other one. Involving Salish Indian Louis Charlo

   Posted by: admin    in Flathead Indian Reservation, Indian History, Native veterans, Pima, Salish

The first Iwo Jima flag raising (Minnesota Public Radio photo)

The first Iwo Jima flag raising (Minnesota Public Radio photo)



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Everybody knows the story of the famous Iwo Jima photo, how AP photographer Joe Rosenthal snapped a picture as Marines raised a flag atop Mount Suribachi in the midst of a horrendous battle. Rosenthal got a Pulitzer and one of those men, a Pima Indian named Ira Hayes, went on to brief glory, then an early, ignoble end, then a return to posthumous glory because of Johnny Cash’s song, “The Ballad of Ira Hayes.”

Not so many people know that the flag in that photo was the second raised that day; that the first went up because of a bunch of soldiers from the USS Missoula, and among them was a young Salish Indian from the Flathead Reservation in Montana named Louis Charlo, and that his end was anything but ignoble – quite the opposite, in fact. Blackfeet singer-songwriter Jack Gladstone is setting out to change that. The Missoulian’s Kim Briggman tells the story here in today’s paper.

Louis Charlo

Louis Charlo

The focus on Louis Charlo, when there’s a focus at all, is how he helped raise the first flag on Iwo Jima and how he died there.

There is so much more to the story, and Jack Gladstone is determined to tell it.

“This is a coming out of the bear’s den for this grizzly,” Montana’s Native “PoetSinger” from Kalispell and the Blackfeet Indian Nation said last week.

Gladstone is making an epic cut he calls “Remembering Private Charlo” into an 11-minute, 45-second centerpiece for his first new CD in seven years, one he’s calling “Native Anthropology.”

On Tuesday, the 65th anniversary of the raising of the flag on Mount Suribachi on the tiny Japanese island in the South Pacific, Gladstone will be in the second day of a recording session in Tucson, Ariz. He’ll be working with the likes of Montana virtuoso David Griffith and Will Clipman, a percussionist-drummer for Native flutist R. Carlos Nakai. Clipman, like Nakai, is a multi-Grammy nominee.

“I’m going to lay the rhythm beds for probably the best thing I’ve ever done,” said Gladstone.

He’ll be back in Montana next week to record, and said he would love to have the CD out by mid-May.
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4
Dec

With return of mask to family, Ira Hayes may finally be at rest

   Posted by: admin    in Gila River Tribe, Indian Veterans, Native veterans

Ira Hayes (left) was among those raising the flag on Iwo Jima. (Joe Rosenthal/AP)

Ira Hayes (left) was among those raising the flag on Iwo Jima. (Joe Rosenthal/AP)


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Ira Hayes (DefenseLink.com)

Ira Hayes (DefenseLink.com)

Ira Hayes is, of course, one of the people in the Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph of the flag being raised on Mount Suribachi on Iwo Jima.

Hayes, who was Pima Indian from Bapchule, Ariz , died more than a half-century ago. But his family learned just last month that a plaster cast had been made of his face while he lay in a Phoenix mortuary, according to this story in USA Today.

Nor did the family know that the mask had been displayed at the Gilbert Ortega Museum Gallery of Scottsdale.

“In Pima culture, when you pass on, everything you own is supposed to go with you,” says Sharon Cook, a Hayes family member. “They say because of this, Ira’s body was never sent to rest.”

The gallery sent the mask to his brother, Kenneth Hayes, last month. Within hours, according to the story, the Hayes family returned it to the Gila River Indian Reservation where Hayes was born and died.

The mask was broken into pieces and buried near his parents’ graves, Sharon Cook tells USA Today.

Despite being hailed as a hero, Hayes never recovered from his war experiences, returning to Gila Rive and dying of exposure in 1955 at the age of just 32.

Gwen Florio

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