Now All Together Poster

This iconic 1945 poster based on Joe Rosenthal's Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph of Marines raising the American flag atop Mount Suribachi during the Battle of Iwo Jima represents the most famous American World War II image, transformed by artist C.C. Beall into the official Treasury Department poster for the Seventh War Loan campaign. The photograph, taken on February 23, 1945, actually captured the second flag-raising that day—a larger replacement flag visible from across the island—but became the defining symbol of American determination and sacrifice in the Pacific War. The battle for Iwo Jima, fought from February to March 1945, proved one of the bloodiest Pacific campaigns, with nearly seven thousand Americans killed taking an eight-square-mile volcanic island whose strategic value—airfields for damaged B-29 bombers returning from Japan—was debated even during the battle.

The Seventh War Loan represented the final major bond drive of World War II, promoted under the slogan "Now All Together" to emphasize the united home front effort required to support the war's conclusion and anticipated invasion of Japan. The poster's emotional power derives from the photograph's composition—Marines straining collectively to raise the flag against stormy sky—which transformed a routine military procedure into mythic narrative of American persistence triumphing over adversity. The image's subsequent ubiquity in war bond promotion, commemorative stamps, memorials, and popular culture demonstrates how single photographs could be weaponized for propaganda purposes, though the reality proved more complex than the heroic imagery suggested. Three of the six flag-raisers died on Iwo Jima within days of the photograph, and survivors faced uncomfortable celebrity as they were withdrawn from combat and sent on bond tours—their comrades continued dying while they performed patriotism for civilian audiences who purchased bonds partly inspired by image of sacrifice they could not truly comprehend.