SAN FRANCISCO, CA.- World War II photographer Joe Rosenthal, 94, died in San Francisco. He is famous for his image of six US WWII troops raising their country's flag over Iwo Jima. According to his daughter, he died of natural causes. Joe Rosethal won a Pulitzer Prize for the 1945 flag-raising photo. The image later served as a model for the Marine Corps Memorial in Arlington, Virginia. The famous image was taken on 23 February, four days after US troops landed on the small strategic Pacific island. It shows the second flag-raising on Mount Suribachi that day. Althought there were suggestions the picture had been staged, Joe Rosenthal always denied them.

Joe Rosenthal wrote ten years after taking that picture in Collier's magazine., “Out of the corner of my eye... I had seen the men start the flag up. I swung my camera, and shot the scene."

At the time Joe Rosenthal was working for the Associated Press. He later stated, "Millions of Americans saw this picture five or six days before I did, and when I first heard about it, I had no idea what picture was meant."