Ira Hayes raised a flag on a volcanic island in 1945 and became the most famous Marine in America. Ten years later, he died alone in a ditch on his reservation, frozen to death at 32. Hayes was a Pima Indian from Arizona, a quiet farm kid who joined the Marines after Pearl Harbor. He landed on Iwo Jima in February 1945, one of the bloodiest battles in the Pacific. For five days, Marines fought inch by inch up Mount Suribachi while Japanese soldiers fired from hidden tunnels. On the fifth day, Hayes and five other men climbed to the summit and planted an American flag. A photographer named Joe Rosenthal captured the moment. The image went viral before viral existed.
Overnight, Hayes became a symbol of American courage. The government pulled him off the front lines and sent him on a war bond tour across the country. He shook hands with presidents, smiled for cameras, and sold millions of dollars in bonds. But he hated it. He never thought he was a hero. He was just one of six men raising a pole, and three of them died on Iwo Jima days later.
When the war ended, Hayes went home to Arizona. No job. No money. The reservation had no running water. Whites refused to serve him in bars because he was Native. He started drinking. He was arrested 52 times for public intoxication. In 1955, he passed out in an irrigation ditch during winter. He froze to death. He was 32 years old.
Hayes fought for a country that still treated him like a second-class citizen. His face is carved into the Marine Corps War Memorial in Washington, seen by millions every year. But the man himself died forgotten, broke, and alone on the same land he grew up on.