A photojournalist who captured one of the most enduring images of World War II — the U.S. Marines raising the flag on the Japanese island of Iwo Jima — had a block in downtown San Francisco named for him Thursday.
Joe Rosenthal, who died in 2006 at age 94, was working for The Associated Press in 1945 when he took the Pulitzer Prize-winning photo.
After the war, he went to work as a staff photographer for the San Francisco Chronicle, and for 35 years until his retirement in 1981, he captured moments of city life both extraordinary and routine.
Rosenthal photographed famous people for the paper, including a young Willie Mays getting his hat fitted as a San Francisco Giant in 1957, and regular people, including children making a joyous dash for freedom on the last day of school in 1965.
The 600 block of Sutter Street, near downtown’s Union Square, became Joe Rosenthal Way after a short ceremony Thursday morning. The Marines Memorial Club, which sits on the block, welcomed the street’s new name.
Aaron Peskin, who heads the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, welcomed the city’s political elite, military officials and members of Rosenthal’s family to toast the late photographer, who was born in Washington, D.C., to Russian Jewish immigrant parents.
The famous photo became the centerpiece of a war bonds poster that helped raise $26 billion in 1945. Tom Graves, chapter historian for the USMC Combat Correspondents Association, which pushed for the street naming, said the image helped win the war.
“But I’ve grown over the years to appreciate also his role as a San Francisco newspaper photographer who, as Supervisor Peskin says, went to work every day photographing the city where we all live, we all love,” he said.
Graves and others said they look forward to tourists and locals happening upon the street sign, seeing Rosenthal’s name for perhaps the first time, and then going online to learn about the photographer with the terrible eyesight but an eye for composition.
Rosenthal never considered himself a wartime hero, just a working photographer lucky enough to document the courage of soldiers.
When complimented on his Pulitzer Prize-winning photo, Rosenthal said: “Sure, I took the photo. But the Marines took Iwo Jima.”
