“I found out I am not only fighting for the little bitty piece of land I talk about, [or] my immediate family. I found out I was fighting for all the Indian people, all the people of the United States.”


— Samuel Tso (Navajo), U.S. Marine Corps code talker, World War II


Ira Hayes was 19 years old when this image was taken in 1943 at the United States Marine Corps Parachute Training School in San Diego, Califor- nia, where he was dubbed Chief Falling Cloud.


Corporal Ira Hamilton Hayes (Pima), on the far left, remains one of the best-known American Indians to serve in World War II. In 1945, Hayes was one of six servicemen who raised the American flag during the Battle of Iwo Jima in the South Pacific—a moment captured in a celebrated photograph by Joe Rosenthal.


SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION 39


PHOTO BY JOE ROSENTHAL; NATIONAL ARCHIVES PHOTO NO. 520748


NATIONAL ARCHIVES PHOTO NO. 519164


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