Joe Rosenthal took the most famous photograph of the 20th century without looking through his viewfinder, and the flag in it was a replacement. This episode reconstructs February 23, 1945, on Mount Suribachi: the first flag raised on a Japanese water pipe at about 10:30 a.m., Navy Secretary James Forrestal’s wish to keep it as a souvenir, Lieutenant Colonel Chandler Johnson’s refusal, and the larger 96-by-56-inch flag sent up in its place that Rosenthal captured at 1/400th of a second.

We then follow the fallout: the staging rumor born from a misunderstood answer about a separate group shot, the seventh war loan drive that raised over $26 billion, and the three separate corrections to the identities of the six men, from Harlan Block in 1947 to Harold Schultz in 2016 and Harold Keller in 2019. Along the way we look at what fame did to Ira Hayes, René Gagnon, and John Bradley, and at the men who died on the island before ever knowing they were famous.

• Why an 11-mile tunnel network let Japanese defenders reoccupy bunkers the Marines had already cleared
• How the Speed Graphic camera’s single-shot mechanics froze a chaotic heave into a classical pose
• Harlan Block’s mother recognizing her son from his posture and the government dismissing her
• The forensic clues, from rifle straps to a wedding ring, that amateur historians used to correct the record
• Felix de Weldon’s 72-hour wax model and the nine years it took to build the Arlington memorial