Flag Raising In 3-D

After four days of staggering losses in their mission to capture the Japanese-held island of Iwo Jima, U.S. troops were in desperate need of a morale boost.

It came about 10:30 a.m. Friday, Feb. 23, 1945, in the form of a small flag affixed to a heavy iron pipe.

Sgt. Lou Lowery, a photographer for Leatherneck magazine, documented the scene as a half-dozen fellow Marines raised their improvised flagpole at the rubble-strewn summit of Mount Suribachi.

It was the first time a U.S. flag had flown over Japanese territory.

Lowery captured the historic flag-raising in a series of black-and-white photographs. Moments later he was tumbling down the side of the mountain to avoid a Japanese grenade attack. Although his camera was smashed, Lowery - and his film - survived.

But Lowery's photographs, like the dramatic event he had documented, were forever overshadowed by the iconic image of a second flag-raising two hours later.

As Lowery descended Suribachi, hoping to find another camera, he encountered other photographers on their way up the rugged slope. Among them were Marine cinematographer Sgt. Bill Genaust and still photographer Joe Rosenthal of The Associated Press.

``I didn't have any thought that there would be a second flag-raising,'' Rosenthal recalled. ``Didn't know it until I got to the top.''

Detractors have claimed that Rosenthal orchestrated the second flag-raising and that his celebrated photograph had been posed. In their 1995 book, ``Shadow of Suribachi,'' historians Parker Albee Jr. and Keller Cushing Freeman dismantled those charges.

Soon after the first flag was raised, Albee and Freeman wrote, commanders decided it should be replaced with a much larger battle flag, one that could be seen more easily by fighting men across the island and from ships offshore. The first flag was to be lowered as the larger flag was raised.

Genaust and Rosenthal stood side-by-side atop the windswept mountain at an arm's length from each other. Out of the corner of his eye, Rosenthal noticed the second flag being readied, and he and Genaust quickly swung their cameras up.

Rosenthal's camera allowed him to capture one image during the flag-raising; Genaust's film footage shows it to have been a spontaneous event - not a contrived or practiced pose. Five Marines and a Navy corpsman lifted the metal flagpole in a quick, fluid movement.

A single frame from Genaust's film freezes the action at precisely the same split-second as Rosenthal's Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph.

The striking similarity of those two images has been noted by a number of World War II historians. An intriguing photographic prospect has gone unexplored for the past six decades, however:

By juxtaposing Rosenthal's photograph with the matching frame from Genaust's film, it is possible to produce an authentic 3-D image of the Iwo Jima flag-raising.

For the first time, we can see one of the most iconic moments in U.S. military history with a real sense of depth and spatial relationships.

The 3-D effects are not the result of digital manipulation or computer trickery. They are based on the same photographic techniques that have been used to produce stereoscopic imagery for more than a century.

A 3-D photograph allows the viewer to see a single image from two slightly different viewpoints, mimicking the natural separation of human eyes.

When two nearly identical images are directed independently to a viewer's eyes, the brain combines the resulting visual signals to produce a single merged image. The separation of viewpoints results in a natural stereoscopic effect.

The most common example of this 3-D process is the View- Master, a toy that sends slightly different images to the viewer's eyes through two separate lenses.

To see the flag-raising photographs as a single three- dimensional image, follow the step-by-step instructions in the graphic at left. If you have access to a standard pair of 3- D glasses with red and blue lenses, you can view a red-blue stereoscopic version of the image online at TBO.com, Keyword: Iwo Jima.

The stereoscopic image was produced with the technical assistance of Boris Starosta, an expert in the field of 3-D photography. Seeing the assembled photographs for the first time, Starosta was surprised by the realistic depth of the 3-D image. ``In the tiny subgenre of `found' or accidental stereos,'' he wrote, ``this one has got to be the most interesting one I've ever seen or even heard of.''

``You've got quite a find on your hands.''

Author and historian Albee supplied the appropriate frame from Genaust's film - seen on the left, above. Rosenthal's photograph, on the right, is from the archives of The Associated Press.

Albee notes that the three- dimensional image is more than a simple curiosity. ``3-D enables us to view with greater clarity this historic moment.

``When the Marines' first effort was made to identify the men in the photograph, only the names of five men were sought - the hands of a sixth man not being readily apparent,'' Albee said. ``3-D, however, allows the viewer to quickly detect the presence of that sixth man.''

Reporter Greg Williams can be reached at (813) 259-7906.