James Bradley, ‘Flags of Our Fathers’ Co-Author, Dies at 72

Q: His father wasn't in the iconic photo, so what is the true story of heroism that inspired the famous book?

The real story behind *Flags of Our Fathers* was not that James Bradley’s father appeared in Joe Rosenthal’s famous photo, but that John “Doc” Bradley was a genuine Iwo Jima hero whose wartime service helped lead his son to uncover the larger truth about the battle and the men tied to the image. Doc Bradley was a Navy corpsman attached to the Marines during the Battle of Iwo Jima in 1945. He was part of the patrol involved in the *first* flag-raising on Mount Suribachi, a smaller event that happened before Rosenthal photographed the better-known *second* flag-raising. Decades later, Marine Corps reviews confirmed Bradley was not in the iconic second-raising photo; Harold Schultz had been misidentified as Bradley, and Harold Keller was later confirmed in place of Rene Gagnon. Bradley’s heroism was still substantial. On Iwo Jima, he repeatedly treated wounded Marines under intense fire and received the Navy Cross for valor. Like many veterans, he rarely spoke about what he had seen. That silence drove James Bradley to investigate his father’s experience and, ultimately, the lives of all the men connected to the flag-raising. The book’s deeper subject was the brutal reality of Iwo Jima, where about 6,800 Americans were killed, and the burden carried by the men turned into national symbols. It told not just of a photograph, but of battlefield courage, trauma, mistaken identity, and the difficult postwar lives of the survivors.

3 articles · Updated · The New York Times · Jun 19

James Bradley died on June 5 at 72, his daughter Alison Cinnamond confirmed, though she gave no further details.
Bradley turned his search into his father’s Iwo Jima service into “Flags of Our Fathers,” the 2000 best seller he wrote with Ron Powers.
The book spent 46 weeks on the New York Times best-seller list, reached No. 1 and was adapted into a 2006 Clint Eastwood film.
Its account of the six flag raisers also revisited the mistaken belief that Bradley’s father, Navy corpsman John “Doc” Bradley, appeared in the iconic Mount Suribachi photograph.