U.S. Search Team Finds Iwo Jima Sites

Mount Suribachi is seen on Iwo Jima off Japan's main island in this file photo of July 12, 2004. A U.S. search team is on the island looking for a cave where a Marine combat photographer who filmed the famous World War II flag-raising 62 years ago is believed to have been killed in battle nine days later, military officials said Friday, June 22, 2007. The seven-member team, from the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command, based at Hickam Air Force Base in Hawaii, is on Iwo Jima looking for the remains of Sgt. Willam H. Genaust and "as many other American servicemen as they can find," JPAC spokesman Lt. Col. Mark Brown told The Associated Press. (AP Photo/ Eric Talmadge, File) (Eric Talmadge - AP)

IWO JIMA, Japan -- The U.S. search team looking for the remains of a Marine killed after filming the iconic flag-raising on Iwo Jima has found two possible sites and will recommend a larger team excavate them, officials said Wednesday.

"Our investigation has been very successful," said U.S. Army major Sean Stinchion, who has led the search team for 10 days of surveying and digging on the volcanic Pacific island.

"We found two caves and tunnels. We will recommend a follow-up team be brought in to use heavy equipment," he said.

He said the team did not find the remains of sergeant William H. Genaust, who filmed the flag-raising nine days before he was killed during combat on the island.

"We are the initial investigation. We surveyed the hill. We will need to return to actually dig for specific remains," Stinchion said.

The seven-man team, including an anthropologist, focused mainly on surveying Hill 362 A where Genaust was believed to have been killed.

It was the first U.S.-led search on Iwo Jima _ one of the fiercest and most symbolic battlegrounds of World War II _ in nearly 60 years.

The seven-member team arrived on Iwo Jima on June 17 and began slashing its way through thick, thorny brush on the island's interior in search of the area where Genaust is believed to have been killed.

A combat photographer with the 28th Marines, Genaust filmed the raising of the flag atop Iwo Jima's Mount Suribachi on Feb. 23, 1945, standing just feet away from Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal as he took the photograph that won a Pulitzer Prize and came to symbolize the war in the Pacific.

Genaust, then 38, died nine days later when he was hit by machine-gun fire as he was helping fellow Marines secure a cave, said Johnnie Webb, a civilian official with the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command, headquartered at Hickam Air Force Base in Hawaii.

Some 88,000 U.S. service members are listed as missing from World War II, and JPAC conducts searches throughout the world to find them.

Iwo Jima _ inhabited only by a small contingent of Japanese troops _ continues to be an open grave.