Ex-Marine Lou Lowery Missed Later, Famous Photo : Photographer Who Shot 1st Iwo Jima Flag Picture Dies

They will bury photographer Lou Lowery on Tuesday in the Quantico National Cemetery in northern Virginia near the 100-ton bronze monument that depicts six Marines raising a giant American flag atop Mt. Suribachi on Iwo Jima.

No, Lou wasn’t the one who took the picture that became a symbol of American victory on that long-ago February day, but he was the first to photograph the flag-raising on the 560-foot hill.

The combat correspondent who took a second set of pictures was Joe Rosenthal, now retired in San Francisco after a Pulitzer Prize-winning career with the Associated Press and the San Francisco Chronicle.

Memorable Day

On Thursday, the day after his old friend Lowery, 70, died in Springfield, Va., after a long bout with anemia, Rosenthal recalled the events of that day on Iwo Jima:

“I had heard that there was a patrol going up Suribachi. It was the fifth day of the battle and the Marines had taken the hill. A colonel had ordered a flag to be flown . . . to show our guys that we had won.

“I was headed up the mountain and saw Lou, who was shooting for the Marine Corps, on the way down. ‘You guys are kinda late,’ he said. ‘I’ve already got the pictures.’ ”

And he had--pictures of Marines standing beside a 54-by-28-inch flag they had taken up a mountain pocked by the 72 days of savage shelling that preceded the Feb. 19, 1945, invasion of Iwo Jima.

But what neither Rosenthal nor Lowery knew was that the colonel who had ordered the flag-raising was dissatisfied with the size of his victory symbol.

For All to See

“He said the flag was too small, that the Marines down below couldn’t see it,’ Rosenthal said by telephone. “He ordered a bigger one from a ship in the harbor.”

As Rosenthal debated whether it was worth continuing his dangerous climb, the Marines with the bigger, neatly folded flag passed him.

Lowery went on down and Rosenthal went on up.

“It was the luckiest picture I ever took,” Rosenthal said.

Originally he had contemplated photographing both flags, but discarded that idea as too confusing. So he waited as the six Marines selected for the task wrapped the 96-by-56-inch flag around a 20-foot pipe the Japanese had left on top of the mountain.

Conditions Were Right

“No photographer could have ever asked for a better break. The sun was just right to silhouette the patrol. The wind was just right to blow the flag. The pipe--it must have weighed 100 pounds--was so heavy the guy holding it was struggling, typifying the struggle the Marines had in securing the island.”

In 1954, President Dwight D. Eisenhower dedicated the Iwo Jima Memorial modeled after Rosenthal’s picture. Rosenthal’s friend will lie in the cemetery nearby.

Was there a rivalry?

Never, said Rosenthal, recalling their four-decade friendship.

“We used to tell each other all the time that ‘we know who is the better photographer. We also know who is the luckier photographer.’ ”

Lowery, who retired as a Marine Corps Reserve captain and was photo director of Leatherneck magazine, is survived by his wife, Doris, a son, a daughter and a grandchild.