

Wood, who was a 22-year-old navy officer in second world war, credited with finding the flag for the iconic photograph
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Iwo Jima American flag-raising
US marines raising the American flag atop Mt Suribachi in Iwo Jima, Japan, in 1945. Photograph: Joe Rosenthal/AP

Alan Wood, a second world war veteran credited with providing the flag in the famous flag-raising on Iwo Jima, has died. He was 90.

Wood died 18 April of natural causes at his Sierra Madre home, his son Steven Wood said on Saturday.

Wood was a 22-year-old US navy officer in charge of communications on a landing ship on Iwo Jima's shores 23 February 1945 when a marine asked him for the biggest flag that he could find.

After five days of fighting to capture the Japanese-held island, US forces had managed to scale Mount Suribachi to hoist an American flag.

Wood happened to have a 37-square-foot flag he had found months before in a Pearl Harbor navy depot.

Five Marines and a navy corpsman later raised that flag in a stirring moment captured by Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal.



In its story on Wood's death, the Los Angeles Times reported that over the years others have claimed that they provided the flag, but retired Marine Col Dave Severance, who commanded the company that took Mount Suribachi, said in an interview last week that it was Wood.




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