Ira Hayes

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Ira Hamilton Hayes

January 12, 1923(1923-01-12) – January 24, 1955 (aged 32)

Nickname: Chief Falling Cloud Place of Death: Bapchule, Arizona, United States Place of Burial: Arlington National Cemetery, Section 34 Allegiance: United States United States of America Service/Branch: USMC logo.svg United States Marine Corps Years of Service: 1942-1945 Rank: Corporal Unit: 3rd Parachute Battalion, 2nd Battalion, 28th Marines, 1st Headquarters Battalion, HQMC Battles/Wars: World War II Battle of Vella Gulf Bougainville Campaign Battle of Iwo Jima

Ira Hamilton Hayes was a Pima Native American and an enrolled member of the Gila River Indian Community. A veteran of the Battle of Iwo Jima in World War II, Hayes was trained as a Paramarine in the United States Marine Corps (USMC), and became one of five Marines, along with a United States Navy corpsman, immortalized in the iconic photograph of the flag raising on Iwo Jima. Hayes was born on the Gila River Indian Reservation in Sacaton, Arizona, to Joseph E. and Nancy W. Hayes. He dropped out of high school and enlisted in the Marine Corps Reserves on August 24, 1942. When he completed recruit training at Marine Corps Recruit Depot San Diego, Hayes trained as a paratrooper at Marine Corps Base San Diego and had a codename of Chief Falling Cloud. On December 2, 1942, he joined Company B, 3rd Parachute Battalion, Divisional Special Troops, 3rd Marine Division, at Camp Elliott, California. On March 14, 1943, Hayes sailed for New Caledonia with the 3rd Parachute Battalion. Hayes first saw combat in Bougainville. When he returned to the United States on leave, his family noticed he had become more disciplined and serious than before he enlisted. The Marine Corps parachute units were disbanded in February, and Hayes was transferred to Company E, 2nd Battalion, 28th Marines, 5th Marine Division at Camp Pendleton. In September 1944, Hayes sailed to Hawaii for further training. On February 19, 1945, Hayes took part in the landing on Iwo Jima. He then participated in the battle for the island and was among the group of Marines that took Mount Suribachi five days later on February 23, 1945. The raising of the second American flag on Suribachi by five Marines, Ira Hayes, Rene Gagnon, Harlon Block, Franklin Sousley, and Mike Strank, and a Navy Corpsman, John Bradley, was immortalized by photographer Joe Rosenthal and became an icon of the war. Overnight, Hayes became a national hero, along with the two other survivors in the famous photograph, Rene Gagnon and John Bradley.

When Iwo Jima was secured by the U. S. forces, Hayes was ordered to Washington, D.C. Together with the Navy Pharmacist's Mate John Bradley and Marine Private First Class Rene Gagnon, he was assigned to temporary duty with the Finance Division, U.S. Treasury Department, for appearances in connection with the Seventh War Bond Drive.After the war, Hayes attempted to lead a normal civilian life. "I kept getting hundreds of letters. And people would drive through the reservation, walk up to me and ask, 'Are you the Indian who raised the flag on Iwo Jima'?" Although he rarely spoke about the flag raising, he spoke about his service in the Marine Corps with great pride. After returning home from the war, Hayes remained troubled that one of his friends, Harlon Block (one of the flag raisers, killed in action days after the event), was mistaken for another man, Hank Hansen. Hayes later hitchhiked 1,300 miles from his Pima Indian reservation to Ed Block's farm in Texas in order to reveal the truth to Block's family. He was instrumental in having the controversy resolved, to the delight and gratitude of the Block family. Ira Hayes appeared in the 1949 John Wayne film, Sands of Iwo Jima, along with fellow flag raisers John Bradley and Rene Gagnon. All three men played themselves in the movie. Wayne hands the flag to be raised to the three men. (The actual flag that was raised on Mount Suribachi is used in the film.)

After the war, Hayes accumulated a record of 52 arrests for public drunkenness. Referring to his alcoholism, he once said: "I was sick. I guess I was about to crack up thinking about all my good buddies. They were better men than me and they're not coming back. Much less back to the White House, like me." In 1954, after a ceremony where he was lauded by President Eisenhower as a hero, a reporter rushed up to him and asked him, "How do you like the pomp and circumstance?" Hayes hung his head and said, "I don't." Hayes' disquiet about his unwanted fame and his subsequent postwar problems were first recounted in detail by the author William Bradford Huie in "The Outsider", published in 1959 as part of his collection Wolf Whistle and Other Stories. The Outsider was filmed in 1961, directed by former WW II veteran turned film director Delbert Mann and starring Tony Curtis. The 2006 film Flags of Our Fathers, directed by Clint Eastwood, suggests that Hayes suffered from posttraumatic stress disorder.On January 24, 1955, Hayes was found dead, lying face down in his own vomit and blood, near an abandoned hut close to his home on the Gila River Indian Reservation. He had been drinking and playing cards with several other men, including his brothers Kenny and Vernon, and another fellow Pima Indian named Henry Setoyant, with whom an argument and a scuffle developed. Shortly afterward, the card game broke up, and all but Hayes and Setoyant left. The coroner concluded that Hayes's death was due to both exposure and alcohol. However, his brother Kenny remained convinced that the death somehow resulted from the scuffle with Setoyant. There was no police investigation, and Setoyant denied any allegations that he scuffled with Hayes after all the players left for the night. Ira Hayes was 32. In the 1961 film of his life, The Outsider, his death is dramatized for the screen. He is shown freezing to death on an Arizona mountain top, after a night of drinking. Hayes is buried in Section 34, Grave 479A at Arlington National Cemetery. At the funeral, fellow flag-raiser Rene Gagnon said of him: "Let's say he had a little dream in his heart that someday the Indian would be like the white man — be able to walk all over the United States." Hayes' tragic story was immortalized in a song, "The Ballad of Ira Hayes," by Peter LaFarge. Covers of this song were done by Johnny Cash, Kris Kristofferson, Smiley Bates, Pete Seeger, Bob Dylan, Kinky Friedman, Tom Russell, Hazel Dickens, Patrick Sky, and Townes Van Zandt. In 1964, Cash took the song to number 3 on the Billboard country music chart.

On November 10, 1993, the United States Marine Corps held a ceremony at the Iwo Jima Memorial commemorating the anniversary of the Corps. Of Ira Hayes, USMC Commandant General Carl Mundy said: One of the pairs of hands that you see outstretched to raise our national flag on the battle-scarred crest of Mount Suribachi so many years ago, are those of a Native American ... Ira Hayes ... a Marine not of the ethnic majority of our population.