Wednesday, February 6, 2008


Raymond Jacobs, a former Bay Area television newsman believed to be the
 last living Marine photographed during the flag-raising on Iwo Jima during World War II, has died. He was 82.

Mr. Jacobs died Jan. 29 of natural causes at a hospital in Redding,
according to his daughter, Nancy Jacobs.

He was born in 1926 in Bridgeport, Conn. He retired in 1992 from
 KTVU-TV in Oakland, where he worked 34 years as a reporter, anchor and news director.

Mr. Jacobs spent his later years working to prove that he was the radio
operator photographed gazing up at the American flag as it was being
raised by other Marines over Mount Suribachi on Feb. 23, 1945.

Newspaper accounts from the time show he was on the mountain during the
initial raising of a smaller American flag, though he had returned to his
unit by the time the famous AP photograph taken by Joe Rosenthal of a
flag-raising re-enactment later the same day. The radioman's face isn't fully visible in the first photograph published by Lou Lowery, a photographer for Leatherneck magazine, leading some veterans to question Mr. Jacobs' claim. But other negatives from the same roll of film show that it is in fact Mr. Jacobs, said retired Col. Walt Ford, editor of Leatherneck.

"It's clearly a front-on face shot of Ray Jacobs," Ford said. Annette Amerman, a historian with the Marine Corps history division, said in
an e-mail statement that "there are many that believe" Mr. Jacobs was the
radioman. "However, there are no official records produced at the time that can prove or refute Mr. Jacobs' location." The man with a radio on his back had usually been identified as Pfc.Gene Marshall, a radio operator with the 5th Marine Division who died in 1987. The other men involved in the raising all have died.  Mr. Jacobs was honorably discharged in 1946.


This article appeared on page B - 9 of the San Francisco Chronicle.