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 after him on 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 newspaper, including a young Willie Mays who received his hat as a San Francisco Giant in 1957, and ordinary people, including children making a joyful flight to freedom on the last day of school in 1965.
The 600 block of Sutter Street, near Union Square downtown, became Joe Rosenthal Way Thursday morning after a brief ceremony. The Marines Memorial Club, which sits on the block, welcomed the street’s new name.
Aaron Peskin, head of San Francisco’s 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., on Russian -Jewish immigrant parents.
The famous photo became the centerpiece of a war bond poster that raised $26 billion in 1945. Tom Graves, chapter historian of the USMC Combat Correspondents Association, which pushed for the street naming, said the image helped win the war.
“But I also came to appreciate over the years his role as a newspaper photographer in San Francisco who, as Supervisor Peskin says, went to work every day to photograph the city we all live and love,” he said.
Graves and others said they look forward to tourists and locals coming across the street sign, perhaps seeing Rosenthal’s name for the first time, and then going online to learn more about the photographer with the terrible eyesight but an eye for composition .
Rosenthal never considered himself a war hero, but a working photographer who had the good fortune to document the bravery of soldiers.
When complimented on his Pulitzer Prize-winning photo, Rosenthal said, “Sure, I took the photo. But the Marines took Iwo Jima.”
