Hatch Discusses Famous Iwo Jima Photograph

Del Ray resident Norm Hatch is featured in a Washington Post profile this week about his time with the Marines in World War II and involvement with Joe Rosenthal’s Pulitzer Prize-winning “Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima” photograph.

The photo was taken on Feb. 23, 1945—68 years ago this week.

Rumors have swirled since that day that the photo was posed. Hatch refutes those suggestions in the piece.

“It’s a picture that tells a story,” Hatch told the Post. “It shows the urgency of getting that flag up. It’s got a feeling in it.”

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The W. Mount Ida Avenue resident spent 41 years in the Marines, retiring in 1980. He then opened a photographic consulting business.

The 91-year-old was profiled in a Del Ray Patch blog post by Jessica Mancari in 2012 highlighting his connection to the Academy Awards of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences.

See: Faces of Del Ray — Norm Hatch.

Film that Hatch shot at the Battle of Tarawa in 1943 was used in "With the Marines at Tarawa," a documentary that won the 1944 Academy Award for Best Documentary Short Subject. Nearly 6,000 Americans and Japanese perished in the battle. Rolls of Hatch’s film work are housed in the National Archives.