you know what, i’ve gotta say something: i never wanna see another fucking conservative and/or bigot use this image of the Iwo Jima flag raising to talk about supporting our troops or to silence critics of America’s oppressive system.
and that’s because of a man named Ira Hayes.
Ira Hayes was a Pima Native American man born on the Gila River Indian Community Reservation, a community deeply affected by poverty.
during WWII, Ira Hayes felt compelled to serve, enlisting and becoming a Marine. he fought in Iwo Jima and was one of the few soldiers to survive. he is the fifth man raising the flag in the picture. when he first returned to the US, he was lauded as a hero. he was invited to the White House and paraded around. he did a press tour with the two other surviving flag raisers.
but that was it. after Ira’s usefulness to the government was through, he was abandoned. suffering from severe PTSD–then known as “shell shock”–and without employment opportunities or governmental aid, he became an alcoholic and lived in abject poverty, unable to find steady work. he died on his reservation, alone in a ditch from alcohol poisoning and exposure, utterly forgotten by the government that had so happily used him, first as a soldier and then as a promotional prop for american victory.
Ira Hayes’s story is a perfect example of the manner in which the US government and military uses young men, often men of color and/or men who live in poverty, and then abandons them to fucking starve and suffer. when people use that picture to say “support our troops!” they are unwittingly showcasing a figure who proves the government and public at large doesn’t do that. once more, when they use it to silence people protesting racial inequality, they are literally using the image of a man of color who was subjected to racism, which is fucking spitting on his name.
“Down the ditches a thousand years,
the waters grew Ira’s peoples’ crops
‘til the white man stole their water rights
and the sparkling water stopped
Now, Ira’s folks were hungry,
and their land grew crops of weeds;
when war came, Ira volunteered
and forgot the white man’s greed.
There they battled up Iwo Jima hill,
two hundred and fifty men,
but only twenty-seven lived
to walk back down again.
And when the fight was over
and Old Glory raised,
among the men who held it high
was the Indian, Ira Hayes.
Ira Hayes returned a hero,
celebrated through the land;
he was wined and speeched and honored,
everybody shook his hand
But he was just a Pima Indian,
no water, no home, no chance;
at home nobody cared what Ira’d done
and when did the Indians dance.
Then Ira started drinking hard,
jail was often his home;
they let him raise the flag and lower it
like you’d throw a dog a bone.
He died drunk early one morning,
alone in the land he fought to save,
two inches of water and a lonely ditch
was a grave for Ira Hayes.
Call him drunken Ira Hayes,
he won’t answer anymore,
not the whiskey drinking Indian
or the marine that went to war.
Yeah, call him drunken Ira Hayes,
but his land is just as dry,
and his ghost is lying thirsty
in the ditch where Ira died.” - “The Ballad of Ira Hayes,” Peter Lafarge & Johnny Cash
