Education, Training, & influences

• Joe attended McKinley Technical High School in Washington, D.C.

Early Career

• After his graduation in 1929 Rosenthal began working as an office boy with the Newspaper Enterprise Association, where he gained experience in photojournalism.
• When America entered World War II Rosenthal joined the U.S. Maritime Service and spent a year as a warrant officer, taking photographs and documenting life aboard ship in Europe and Africa.
• Rosenthal took the famous Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima photograph that made his name.

Later Career

• Rosenthal's photograph is certainly one of the best-known images of World War II: he captured the heroism of the Marine Corps at a crucial moment, just as Americans began to question their role in the war.
• Rosenthal was present during the initial assault on Iwo Jima on 19 February 1945.
• Rosenthal continued his career as a photojournalist and worked for the San Francisco Chronicle until his retirement in 1981.
• He died in Novato, California, in 2006. That year he was posthumously awarded the Distinguished Public Service Medal by the U.S. Marine Corps.

Why famous & Awards won

• earned himself a Pulitzer Prize
• he witnessed a group of six marines raising a much larger flag on a heavy pole. He quickly snapped the image: the frame took 1/400th of a second, the speed of the shutter on his Speed Graphic camera.
• Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima photograph that made his name
• He received a $4,200 bonus in war bonds from the AP, a $1,000 prize from a camera magazine, and about $700 for a few radio interviews. His name does not appear on the Marine Corps statue.

Websites

• http://www.anb.org/articles/16/16-03564.html
• http://iphf.org/inductees/joe-rosenthal/