Clint Eastwood, Rallying 'Round 'Flags'

Thus Bradley was pulled from the hospital and the other two surviving flag raisers from duty and turned overnight into heroes, or, far worse, celebrities. The fact that the other three had died, completely unaware of the fame that was about to descend upon that 1/400th second, haunted the survivors, as did the memories of the other 4,997 deaths, more or less, on an island less than five miles long that was mostly ash and rock. The book, and the movie from it even more pointedly, tell that story.

Eastwood, who was 14 in February of 1945, says: "I remember as a kid when the battle happened. I remember the picture. I thought it was a great shot. But I didn't analyze it. I was a kid."

Still, there was something about it: "What did strike me was that it wasn't a 'combat' photo -- there were hundreds of combat photos in the newspapers then. Rather, it emphasized the togetherness of the men."

It's a long-ago, faraway memory: He was a working-class kid in the San Francisco area, the son of a vagrant steelworker; from that hardscrabble beginning, he never envisioned what would become of him in the country Mike Strank, Harlon Block and Franklin Sousley died for.

"I remember; it was everywhere. And I remember the Seventh Bond Drive" -- the war bond fundraising drive of which survivors Bradley, Ira Hayes and Rene Gagnon were the focal point. He's not guileful enough to spin a yarn about what a little patriot he was in those days, remembering instead and truly, "Your parents give you a bond instead of a present for Christmas, and that's disappointing if you're a kid."

Years pass, television is invented, then revisionist European westerns, then right-wing cops, and on and on, and suddenly not young anymore, the movie star-director is recommended a book by a friend.

"I read it. It told the whole thing about that generation; I found it very emotional. Then I was struck by the million people in Times Square who came out to see the kids on their bond drive. What was it like for them to see that ? Maybe the beach at Iwo was less frightening than that."

Eastwood liked it so much he tried to buy it, but was too late. DreamWorks, the Steven Spielberg-David Geffen-Jeffrey Katzenberg company, had already obtained the rights.

"But the years passed and I didn't hear about it. You know, you hear when they're making a movie. But then I ran into Steven Spielberg backstage at the [2003] Academy Awards and the conversation came up. He said, 'Why don't you come on over and direct it?' "

Eastwood was 70; he'd never done a big-effects picture, a big-cast picture, a war picture.

"I accepted immediately," he says. "I like all kinds of pictures, big, small -- I just have to like the story. But I crescendoed into this one; it was the biggest thing I'd ever done."

Of course, the script was the next step, not easily accomplished. The book, after all, went into detail about each of the six flag raisers, and tracked their destinies on the island for the entire battle, not just the accidental fraction of a second atop a volcano that Rosenthal froze forever. At the same time, it folded that story into the larger story of the 35-day campaign (the flag-raising was photographed on the fifth day; a month of hell in that very small space and by far the majority of the casualties remained ahead). Then it stayed with Doc, Ira and Rene over the course of the bond tour and beyond, tracking their fates in postwar America.