Another suspect quote: Ira Hayes

[Garson O'Toole]

Jonathan Lighter raises an intriguing question about a quotation
attributed to Ira Hayes, one of the soldiers that famously raised the
second flag on Iwo Jima:
> "How could I feel like a hero when only five men in my platoon of 45
> survived, when only 27 men in my company of 250 managed to escape
> death or injury?"

I have located a book that contains a citation for this quotation to
the Boston Globe in 1945. However, I do not think that I have access
to a database containing the Boston Globe in 1945. ProQuest databases
have many flavors. PR from the firm trumpets a database with Boston
Globe coverage from 1872 to 1979. But access is carefully rationed
because knowledge is dangerous.

On Wed, Jul 21, 2010 at 10:16 AM, Jonathan Lighter
<wuxxmupp2000 at gmail.com> wrote:
> ---------------------- Information from the mail header -----------------------
> Sender:       American Dialect Society <ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU>
> Poster:       Jonathan Lighter <wuxxmupp2000 at GMAIL.COM>
> Subject:      Another suspect quote: Ira Hayes
> -------------------------------------------------------------------------------
>
> Thousands of RGs for this quote about heroism and fame, attributed to Cpl.
> Ira Hayes, one of the Iwo Jima flag-raisers.  Some recent sources claim tha=
> t
> Hayes said it "to reporters" shortly after he attended the dedication of th=
> e
> Iwo Jima Memorial at Arlington in 1954:
>
> =93How could I feel like a hero when only five men in my platoon of 45
> survived, when only 27 men in my company of 250 managed to escape death or
> injury?=94
>
> Widely cited since, including at a DoD site
> http://www.defense.gov/specials/nativeamerican01/flag.html   I can find no
> evidence of the quote's existence (GB, NewspaperArchive, ProQuest, TIME)
> before it appeared on p. 19 of the bestseller _Flags of Our Fathers_, by
> James Bradley and Ron Powers (2000), written 45 years after Hayes's
> premature death.
>
> The book includes source notes, but no source is given for this quote.  The
> context suggests that Bradley was innocently paraphrasing what
> Hayes presumably thought about being acclaimed as a hero.
>
> JL
>
>
>
> --=20
> "If the truth is half as bad as I think it is, you can't handle the truth."
>
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