American Valor Quarterly Issue 10 - Summer 2013 | Page 34

for educational purposes. Of course,
an Academy Award was not exactly
in my mind at the time.
As would be expected, as in war –
and film – there were gaffes. There
were mistakes. And some things just
happened by chance.

Norm Hatch (right), as photographic officer
of the 5th Marine Division pictured
alongside his assistant, Obie Newcomb, in a
photo taken on Iwo Jima, February 25, 1945.
Hatch would be awarded the Bronze Star for
his service on Iwo Jima, and was later part
of the occupation force stationed in Japan.
He was assigned to Nagasaki, where he
documented the devastation caused by the
second atomic bomb.

I was in the command post to see
what the various officers had to say
about what they were doing and the
battalion executive officer, Bill Chamberlain, then a major, told us there
was a big sand block house which had
held up our advance along the waterfront, so they decided to take the
building. After we finished talking, he

said to me, "You want to come and
shoot pictures of it?"
“Sure,” I said. What else was I going
to say? So we half-crawled, halfwalked up to his CP, Bill Kelleher,
my assistant, alongside. He then
called in all of the lieutenants and senior NCOs and they planned out their
assault on the building. It was like a
scene straight out of the movies. Everyone set their watches to make sure
they were synched so they were ready
to attack at 0900 on the mark. At
0900 he looked at me and asked,
"Are you ready?"
"I'm ready," I said. It was dead-si-

“This is what I have to do and I'm
ready to do it.”

Top: Norman T. Hatch; Bottom: Joe Rosenthal - Associated Press

Until that time, the Army had been
fighting tank battles in the African
desert, which you can't really do much
with on film as it’s done at such long
distance. There was the battle in Sicily that didn't receive much coverage
on film, so Tarawa was really the first
time the public could see the war shot
close up and understand what it was
all about.
I understood why this was so important because I had worked in Navy
Public Relations for a good six
months and knew how they were anxious to get the story of the war out
to the public. That importance was
always in the back of my mind. I figured we were out there to document
what was going on for a number of
reasons, including historical record
and for use in training or in colleges

Later in the war, Norman Hatch would play a vital role in the capturing of the most legendary
photo of World War II. After the Marines raised the American flag atop Mt. Suribachi, a
detachment was ordered to the summit to replace it with a second, larger flag. Hatch, who had
come ashore during the first wave of the invasion, ordered two of his men to join the
detachment making their way up to the summit. Along the way, they encountered a photog