Here are James
Bradley's words that night.
"My name is James Bradley and
I'm from Antigo,
Wisconsin. My dad is on
that statue, and I just
wrote a book called "Flags of Our Fathers" which is #5 on the New York
Times Best Seller list right now. It is the story of the six boys you see
behind me.
"Six boys raised the
flag. The first guy putting the pole in the ground is
Harlon Block.
Harlon was an all-state football player. He enlisted in the Marine Corps
with all the senior members of his football team. They were off to play
another type of game. A game called "War." But it didn't turn out to be a
game.
Harlon, at the age of 21, died
with his intestines in his hands. I don't say that to gross you out, I say
that because there are generals who stand in front of this statue and talk
about the glory of war. You
guys need to know that most of
the boys in Iwo Jima were
17, 18, and 19
years old.
(He pointed to the
statue) "You see this next guy? That's
Rene Gagnon
from
New Hampshire. If you took Rene's helmet
off at the moment this
photo was taken and
looked in the webbing of that helmet, you would find a photograph .. a
photograph of his girlfriend.
Rene put that in there
for protection because he was scared. He was 18 years old. Boys won
the battle of
Iwo Jima.
Boys. Not old men.
"The next guy
here, the third guy in this tableau, was Sergeant
Mike Strank.
Mike is my hero. He
was the hero of all these guys.
They called him the
"old man" because he was so old. He was already 24. When Mike would
motivate his boys in training camp, he didn't say, 'Let's go kill some
Japanese' or 'Let's die for our country.' He knew he was talking to little
boys. Instead he would say, 'You do what I say, and I'll get you home to
your mothers.'
"The last guy on this
side of the statue is
Ira Hayes,
a Pima
Indian from
Arizona. Ira Hayes walked off Iwo Jima.
He went into
the
White House with my
dad. President Truman told him, 'You're a hero.' He told reporters,
'How can I feel like a
hero when 250 of my buddies hit the island with me and only 27 of us
walked off alive?' So you take your class at school, 250 of you spending a
year together having fun, doing
everything together. Then all
250 of you hit the beach, but only 27 of your
classmates walk off
alive.
That was Ira Hayes. He
had images of horror in his mind. Ira Hayes died dead drunk, face down at
the age of 32 ... ten years after this picture was taken.
"The next guy, going
around the statue, is
Franklin Sousley
from
Hilltop,
Kentucky. A fun-lovin' hillbilly boy.
His best
friend, who is
now 70, told me, 'Yeah,
you know, we took two cows up on the porch of the Hilltop General Store.
Then we strung wire across the stairs so the cows couldn't get down. Then
we fed them Epsom salts. Those cows crapped all night.' Yes, he
was a fun-lovin' hillbilly
boy.
Franklin
died on Iwo Jima at the age of
19. When the telegram
came to tell his mother that he was dead, it went to the Hilltop General
Store. A barefoot boy ran that telegram up to his mother's farm. The
neighbors could hear her scream all night and into the morning. The
neighbors lived a quarter of a mile away.
"The next guy, as we continue to go around the statue, is my dad,
John
Bradley from Antigo,
Wisconsin, where I was raised.
My dad lived
until
1994, but he would
never give interviews. When Walter Cronkite's producers, or the New York
Times would call, we were trained as little
kids to say, 'No, I'm sorry,
sir, my dad's not here. He is in
Canada
fishing. No, there is
no phone there, sir. No, we don't know when he
is coming back.'
My dad never fished or even
went to Canada. Usually,
he was sitting there right at
the table eating his
Campbell's soup. But
we had to tell the
press that he was out fishing. He didn't want to talk to the press.
"You see, my dad didn't
see himself as a hero. Everyone thinks these guys are heroes, 'cause they
are in a photo and a monument. My dad knew better.
He was a medic. John Bradley
from Wisconsin was a
caregiver. In Iwo
Jima he probably held
over 200 boys as they died. And when boys died in
Iwo Jima, they writhed and
screamed in pain.
"When I was a little
boy, my third grade teacher told me that my dad was a hero. When I went
home and told my dad that, he looked at me and
said, 'I want you always
to remember that the heroes of
Iwo Jima are the
guys who did not come back. Did
NOT come back.'
"So that's the story
about six nice young boys.
Three died on Iwo Jima, and
three came back
as national heroes. Overall,
7,000 boys died on Iwo Jima
in the worst
battle in the history
of the Marine Corps. My voice is giving out, so I will end here. Thank
you for your time."
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