The photograph is a portrait of American victory. The photograph is a symbol of heroism, of sacrifice, of perseverance, of how goodness and virtue prevail over imperialism and evil. The photograph is a passion play in a single frame. The photograph, suggests Bradley, is a Rorschach test, in which the viewer projects and perceives his innermost desires and hopes. The photograph is dense with implication.

The photograph, for a few of its deflected subjects, has been a burden, an enigma. "I have lived in the shadow of the photograph my entire life," says James Bradley, for whom the photograph rises as a steep mountain, capped by this summit of unspeakable horror and frozen silence.

The photograph is now the subject of a book, "Flags of Our Fathers" (Bantam; $24.95), written by Bradley and currently perched atop the New York Times Bestseller List. "Flags" is this month's Bee Book Club selection, and Bradley will speak about the photograph, its composition and his book at 6 p.m. Thursday at Arden Hills Country Club. For more information, call The Bee's Events Hotline at (916) 321-1792.

"This is not a book about WWII," declares Bradley. "It's a book about a photograph with six humans in it. What does the photo mean? I have no idea. Everybody sees it differently. The photograph is like a prism. Everything that goes through it comes out differently on the other side."

In less poetic terms, the photograph is just that -- a photograph.

It was snapped on Feb. 23, 1945, by Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal, armed with a Speed Graphic camera, its shutter speed set at 1/400 of a second. The subject is six U.S. Marines raising the American flag atop Mount Suribachi, a 550-foot-tall volcanic crater riddled with guns and graves, on the Pacific island of Iwo Jima. The light was gracious, the wind sweeping.

Contrary to lore, the photograph was not staged. Nor was it posed. But there was an element of chance, of fortuitous timing. However -- and this is not widely known -- Rosenthal's camera didn't capture the first, original raising of the flag on Iwo Jima. His shot is of a second, replacement flag, more conspicuous, 96-by-56-inches in size, which was lashed to a metal pole and firmly secured to posterity and legend by a pile of rocks.

It was not raised under enemy fire. Nor, the image notwithstanding, was the bloody battle for Iwo Jima anywhere near being won. It had just started. There were many more American and enemy deaths yet to pay. Nonetheless, Rosenthal's provident shot made its way into history, into outsized bronze, into sustaining myth.

It's an image at once triumphant -- and tragic.

On Sunday, Feb. 25, 1945, Rosenthal's photo made the front page of nearly every major newspaper in the United States. It captured the grievous heart of every mother and father in every corner of the country.

It seemed to assure that victory in the Pacific was firmly in hand. It galvanized a moment of American resolve and forever immortalized the U.S. Marine Corps.

And, in short order, the photograph served a public relations campaign as carefully plotted as any military target. The photograph was enlarged into posters, reduced to a postage stamp, was the centerpiece of a U.S. war bonds effort that raised pledges of $26.3 billion. The surviving Marines who planted the flag at Iwo Jima were made instant if reluctant heroes. There were parades, award ceremonies, even a Hollywood movie.

Today, according to Bradley, the raising of the flag atop Mount Suribachi is the mostly widely reproduced image in the history of photography.

What was etched in people's hearts was ultimately cast in monumental bronze. On Nov. 10, 1954, a mountainous sculpture of the six Marines raising the flag at Iwo Jima was unveiled at Arlington National Cemetery. The sculpture weighs more than 100 tons, and each of the nameless figures rises more than 32 feet in height. This statue to date remains the only memorial to World War II in Washington, D.C.

Only three of the six flag-raising soldiers made it back from Iwo Jima, which would claim 7,000 American lives, some 26,000 casualties (for the entrenched Japanese, more than 20,000 soldiers would perish).

Of those three survivors, who had witnessed a scale of death and sacrifice beyond comprehension, Bradley says, "Only one of them managed to live in peace into an advanced age. He achieved this by willing the past into a cave of silence."

That was James Bradley's father -- John "Doc" Bradley, a decorated U.S. Navy corpsman who returned home after the war, married, started a family, ran a successful business, was active in his community, and who never ever spoke about Iwo Jima, the flag, his fallen comrades or the photograph.

Whenever he was asked about the war, his father's standard reply was a terse, "The real heroes of Iwo Jima were the guys who didn't come back."

There is the photograph. And then there is the silence. As much as anything, "Flags of Our Fathers" is a son's search to hear words from a remarkable father -- this quiet man who as a boy bravely served his country and held untold dying soldiers in the cradle of his arms.

His family is from Appleton, Wis. When his father died in January 1994, James Bradley happened upon three boxes of his father's personal effects, letters, photographs, war memorabilia. One item was a letter that John Bradley sent home to his parents from Iwo Jima, in which he wrote: "You know all about our battle out here. I was with the victorious (Easy Company) who reached the top of Mount Suribachi first. I had a little to do with raising the American flag and it was the happiest moment of my life."

For the son, such a declaration of pride was a stunning discovery. Up until then, James Bradley had no idea about his father's exact role, much less his thoughts, in that defining photo of World War II. He continued to sift through the boxes' contents. To further flesh out his father, the son began calling his father's old war buddies and their surviving family members.

What he found out was both gratifying and dismaying. "They began to talk to me," says Bradley. "Nobody had ever contacted them before. And they began to tell me these fabulous stories. That's when I thought there was a book here. And that's what I want to tell. That these were just ordinary guys."

True enough, the five Marines -- John "Doc" Bradley, a Navy corpsman, was assigned to the Marines -- came from humble stock. There was Franklin Sousley, a product of a tobacco farming family in Kentucky; Harlon Block, from the Texas oil fields; Ira Hayes, a Pima Indian from the Gila River Indian Reservation in Arizona; Rene Gagnon, from a small mill town in New England; and Mike Strank, a Pennsylvania coal miner's son.

Events cast all six men into the cauldron of the Pacific. Bradley's protestations to the contrary, "Flags" is ultimately a story about World War II, and his depiction of the battle for Iwo Jima is the book's most dramatic chapter. Iwo Jima, which means "sulfur island" in Japanese, though the military nicknamed it "Hot Rocks," held a strategic location midway between Japan and the U.S.-occupied Marianas Islands.

The tiny island had to be taken to ensure a safe, direct route for B-29 bombing runs to Japan.

The Japanese had secretly fortified the island, burrowing some 22 miles of tunnels and caverns. Iwo Jima, with hidden gun ports and machine gun pillboxes, was essentially a subterranean city of 22,000 soldiers, impervious to aerial and naval bombardment. The unsuspecting 80,000 American troops who stormed ashore in February 1945 were met by a withering, phantom crossfire.

"Many surviving Marines never saw a live Japanese soldier on Iwo Jima," notes Bradley. "They were fighting an enemy they could not see."

But the Marines dug in and, suffering mounting casualties, endured. After five days of fighting, the initial target of Mount Suribachi was won. A flag was spontaneously planted in triumph. Then, under orders of military brass, a second, more visible flag was raised. This became the subject of Joe Rosenthal's celebrated shot. That premature ceremony concluded, the real battle for Iwo Jima commenced. It lasted a month, claiming the lives of thousands, including flag-raisers Strank, Sousley and Block.

Upon V-J Day, returning soldiers tried to resume their lives. The three remaining members of The Photograph were regarded as "heroes." And another sort of battle ensued. Rene Gagnon struggled with his celebrity; Ira Hayes fought the bottle. Only John Bradley found peace in peacetime, by maintaining an armistice of silence. Says the son: "We didn't live with a hero. We didn't live with a flag-raiser. He was just himself."

In "Flags of Our Fathers," James Bradley found some answers about his father, unearthed some voices from the past. Even penetrated his father's mute redoubt. But he still has questions. "The hardest thing must have been holding these guys in his arms when they died," says the son of his father's wartime duty. "I guess if I had the chance, I would ask him, 'What that final moment was like? What did that do to you? Did you ever get over it? How did you experience such things and keep going?' "

As for "The Photograph"? What did that mean in the end? Bradley can only surmise his father's response.

"The photograph represented something private to him, something he could never put into words," believes the son. "It didn't represent any abstraction such as 'valor' or 'the American fighting spirit.' Probably, it represented Mike, Harlon, Ira, Frankin and Rene, and the other boys who fought alongside of him on Iwo Jima, boys whose lives he saved or tried to save."

Related links

• Excerpt from "Flags of Our Fathers"