U.S. Marine Corps War Memorial

Welcome to Arlington, Virginia, and to one of the most recognizable and emotionally stirring monuments in the world: The United States Marine Corps War Memorial, frequently referred to as the Iwo Jima Memorial. As you walk up the…

To truly comprehend the emotional weight of this monument, one must first understand the absolute hellscape of the battle it depicts. The island of Iwo Jima, a tiny volcanic outcropping translating roughly to Sulfur Island, lies…

The image immortalized in this bronze giant was born from a split-second click of a camera shutter on February twenty-third, 1945. What many do not realize is that the famous flag-raising was actually the second flag raised on…

Translating a two-dimensional photograph into a colossal, three-dimensional bronze sculpture was an artistic and engineering feat of monumental proportions. The task fell to the brilliantly talented sculptor Felix de Weldon, who…

The massive bronze figures do not rest upon ordinary stone, but upon a precisely engineered, austere base of highly polished black Swedish granite. The dark, reflective quality of the stone serves to ground the dynamic energy of…

As our visit to the Marine Corps War Memorial concludes, direct your gaze one final time to the very top of the sixty-foot bronze flagpole. There, snapping brilliantly in the wind against the sky, is a real cloth American flag. …