James Bradley, who turned his curiosity about his father’s time in the Navy during the Battle of Iwo Jima — and the long-held but ultimately mistaken belief that he was in the iconic photograph of six soldiers raising the American flag on Mount Suribachi — into the best-selling book “Flags of Our Fathers” (2000), died June 5. He was 72 years old.
His daughter, Alison Cinnamond, confirmed the death but declined to provide further details.
“Flags of Our Fathers,” which Mr. Bradlee wrote with the Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ron Powers, spent 46 weeks on the New York Times best-seller list, climbing to No. 1, and was adapted into a 2006 film directed by Clint Eastwood. Ryan Phillippe played his father in the film.
“Flags” tells the stories of six ensigns – John (Doc) Bradley and five Marines – through a brutal five-week battle against Japanese forces on Iwo Jima, a small volcanic island.
About 6,800 American soldiers lost their lives in the battle, including three flag carriers. Mr. Bradley’s story was based on the National War Bond Tour of the survivors — his father, René Gagnon and Ira Hayes — who starred in their return to the United States and their sometimes difficult postwar life.
Dr. Bradley, who became a funeral director in Antigo, Wisconsin, told his family little about his time in the war, or about the fact that he had received the Navy Cross, the branch’s second-highest award for valor, for treating and saving a wounded Marine during mortar and machine gun fire on Iwo Jima.
But after his death in 1994, his family dug through the boxes he left behind. One of the items was a letter to his parents, postmarked February 26, 1945, three days after the flag-raising photo was taken by Joe Rosenthal of the Associated Press. An image of the Pulitzer-winning photograph appeared on a 3-cent stamp and on millions of war-bond drive posters. The picture also inspired the design of the Marine Corps War Memorial in Arlington, Virginia.
In his letter, Dr. Bradley wrote, “I had a small part in raising the American flag and it was the happiest moment of my life.”
The letter shocked his family.
“If that was the happiest moment of his life,” James Bradley told The Times in 2000, “why did he never talk about it?”
For nearly 70 years, there was little, if any, dispute that the doctor in Mr. Rosenthal’s brilliantly painted picture was Bradley. Ultimately, the Marine Corps released the names of six participants. James Bradley had no doubt about his father’s role, describing in “Flags” how he dropped off a handful of stripes before joining the other five men at the flagpole, where he “held the pole in the center of the cluster.”
But in 2014, an article in The Omaha World Herald described serious doubts raised by amateur historians that the doctor in the photo was Bradley. Mr. Bradley was, at first, dubious.
“Listen, I’ve written a book based on the facts as told to me by people who were actually there,” he told the newspaper. “This is my research. This is what I trust. At the end of the day, the truth is the truth. Anything is possible. But really?”
Eventually he took a deeper look at the newspaper’s findings and became convinced that his father was not in Mr. Rosenthal’s picture, but in A less dramatic one, with a smaller flag, was taken by a Marine photographer during the day on 23 February, which the service branch confirmed.
In 2016, a Marine Corps investigation – inspired by the findings of a documentary, “The Unknown Flag Raiser of Iwo Jima” – concluded that Harold Schultz, a private first class, was the man in the image long identified as Doc Bradley.
James Bradley’s daughter, Ms. Cinnamond, said in an interview that her father did not think the discovery diminished the book’s importance, but he wanted the Marine Corps to get the facts straight about who was actually in the photo.
Actually, this was not the only mistaken identity in the photo. In 1947, the Marine Corps said it had credited Henry Hansen as being in the photo, when it was actually Harlon Block. In 2019, Marine determined One of the Marines featured in Mr. Bradley’s book, Mr. Gagnon, “contributed to the raising of the flag,” but it was actually Harold Keller in the photo.
James Joseph Bradley was born on February 18, 1954 in Antigo. He was one of eight children of John and Elizabeth (Van Gorp) Bradley. James received a bachelor’s degree in East Asian history from the University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1977.
Mr. Bradley was, at first, a traveling cookware salesman, then pursued a career as a corporate event and video producer. Without training as a writer or researcher, he began writing “Flags” on his own, but his proposal was rejected by 27 publishers, one of whom told Mr. Bradley that “Nobody wants to read a book about old men crying on the telephone.”
One of his agents then brought in Mr. Powers as an associate; He won the 1973 Pulitzer for Criticism while writing for The Chicago Sun-Times. Bantam Books soon acquired the book.
The book was one of several successful works during the decade that detailed the bravery of American soldiers during World War II, among them Stephen Ambrose’s “D-Day: June 6, 1944” (1994); Tom Brokaw’s “The Greatest Generation” (1998); Steven Spielberg’s film “Saving Private Ryan” (1998); and the HBO miniseries “Band of Brothers.”
In his review of “Flags of Our Fathers” in The Times, journalist Richard Bernstein called it “not the most affecting because of its graphic depiction of men at war, though its depiction rivals ‘Saving Private Ryan’ with the shocking, unvarnished immediacy.”
Mr. Bradley continued to write about Asia in three subsequent non-fiction books. In “Flyboys: A True Story of Courage” (2003), he told the stories of nine American pilots, including future President George H.W. Bush, who were shot down by the Japanese near Chichijima Island during World War II. While Mr Bush was rescued by an American submarine, the other eight were captured and executed by the Japanese.
In “The Imperial Cruise: A Secret History of Empire and War” (2009), Mr. Bradley wrote critically about President Theodore Roosevelt’s diplomatic mistakes in Asia.
“Bradley explores the racist underpinnings of Roosevelt’s policies and the contradictory basis of his adoption of the Japanese as ‘Honorary Aryans,'” Publishers Weekly wrote in its reviewBut added, “Bradley’s critique of Rooseveltian imperialism is compelling but unbalanced.”
And in “The China Mirage: The Hidden History of American Disaster in Asia” (2015), Mr. Bradley described what he saw as America’s long-standing misconceptions about China in the early 1800s.
He also wrote a novel, “Precious Freedom” (2025), set during the Vietnam War.
Mr. Bradley’s three marriages ended in divorce. Surviving are his two daughters, Ms. Cinnamond and Michelle Bradley, from his marriage to Eileen Haywood; two more children, Jack Bradley and Ava Bradley, from his marriage to Laura Schuler; two sisters, Kathleen and Barbara Bradley; five brothers, Steven, Mark, Patrick, Joseph and Thomas; And two grandchildren. He was also married to Shelley Tupper.
In 1998, Mr. Bradley, his mother and his three brothers traveled to Iwo Jima at the invitation of Marine Corps Commandant General Charles C. Krulak. After climbing Mount Suribachi to the spot where the famous Rosenthal photograph was taken, Mr. Bradley asked everyone present, including the Marines, to sing the only songs Dr. Bradley said he knew: “Home on the Range” and “I’ve Been Working on the Railroad.”
Mr. Bradley wrote in “Flags,” “Without looking up I knew that everyone standing on the mountain top – young and old, women and men; my family – was crying.” “I had tears streaming down my face. Behind me, I could hear my brother Joe’s sobs.”
