Joe Rosenthal, Günter Grass, and more.

Joe Rosenthal, 1911-2006

THE SCRAPBOOK's week began on a melancholy note, with news of the death of Joe Rosenthal.

Mr. Rosenthal, a photographer who worked for the Associated Press and the San Francisco Chronicle, lived to the great age of 94, and, by all accounts, led a happy existence. As often happens to photographers, however, his long life's work was overshadowed by a single picture. But what a picture it was: Five Marines, and one Navy corpsman, raising the Stars and Stripes atop Mount Suribachi on Iwo Jima. The date: February 23, 1945.

The word "iconic" has been largely rendered null and void by overuse, but it certainly applies to this extraordinary image of American fighting men in the Pacific during World War II. Think of all the famous pictures taken during 1941-45--the destruction at Pearl Harbor, General Eisenhower talking to paratroopers before D-Day, GIs marching down the Champs- lysées--and none captures so well, so plainly and eloquently, the spirit of pride, determination, and sacrifice that won the war against fascism in Europe and Asia.

Joe Rosenthal's shot served as the model for the Marine Corps Memorial outside Washington, and may well be the best-known, and most admired, depiction of Americans in uniform defending our freedom.

Over the years, more than a few myths have attached themselves to the picture, despite all efforts to correct the record. For example, the photo was actually not taken at the end of the month-long battle for Iwo Jima, but toward the beginning: Mount Suribachi was the highest point on the island, and the Marines wanted their fellow Marines to see what they had achieved. Nor was the flag-raising staged for Mr. Rosenthal: He happened to be in the right place at the right moment.

Inspiring as the picture may be, it is also emblematic of the terrible cost of the war against Imperial Japan. Of some 22,000 Japanese defenders of the island, only a few hundred were taken prisoner by the time the island was secured on March 26. The Marines suffered 26,000 casualties--more than one-third of the invasion force--of whom 6,821 were killed. For that matter, of the six men depicted in the photograph, three perished in the subsequent battle.

At the dedication of the Marine cemetery on Iwo Jima, Rabbi Roland Gittelsohn--who had served in the battle, and who was the first Jewish Marine chaplain--delivered a eulogy that has acquired a certain fame as well:

Here lie men who loved America because their ancestors generations ago helped in her founding, and other men who loved her with equal passion because they themselves or their own fathers escaped from oppression to her blessed shores. . . . Here no man prefers another because of his faith or despises him because of his color. Here there are no quotas of how many from each group are admitted or allowed. Among these men, there is no discrimination. No prejudice. No hatred. Theirs is the highest and purest democracy. . . .

Putting the SS in Grass

What more can be said about Günter Grass, Germany's sanctimonious author, who recently admitted to having served in the Waffen-SS during World War II? A lot, it turns out. Although Grass insists he neither volunteered for the job nor fired a single shot, critics have been quick to condemn him for his sixty years of silence while badgering others because of their past. We will refrain from joining this chorus of outrage--but are more than happy to let others speak for us.

In the New York Sun, Daniel Johnson assails the author for (among other things) his condemnation of Reagan's visit to the Bitburg cemetery: "You joined in the denunciation of Reagan and Kohl for appearing to pay tribute to the dead of the SS. Somehow, though, it didn't occur to you to say that you could easily have been one of them." Why Grass decided to come out now with this personal revelation, Johnson speculates: "You had an autobiography to sell. The media spectacle, the national soul-searching that you must have known would be unleashed, had one overriding purpose: to make sure that your latest--very possibly your last--book would be a best seller."

As for Grass's defense--that he wished to be a submariner and inadvertently wound up with the Waffen-SS--Johnson doesn't buy it. "They did not take just anyone. . . . The truth that now emerges, Mr. Grass, is that you were one of the last-ditch defenders of the Third Reich. You were a soldier in the 10th SS Panzer Division Frundberg. Let us be clear: The Waffen-SS did not run the death camps, but its troops--some 900,000 of them by the end--were deeply implicated in the Holocaust and responsible for many of the worst atrocities of the war. . . . You, once considered the greatest post-war German writer, nearly died trying to save Hitler!"

"[O]ne was never able to suppress the slight feeling that the author of The Tin Drum was something of a bigmouth and a fraud, and also something of a hypocrite," writes Christopher Hitchens in Slate. "He was one of those whom Gore Vidal might have had in mind when he referred to the high horse, always tethered conveniently nearby, which the writer/rider could mount at any moment. Seldom did Grass miss a chance to be lofty and morally stern. But between the pony and the horse, between the stirrup and the ground, there stood (and stands) a calculating opportunist." Hitchens reminds us of Grass's opposition to German reunification in 1989, calling it an Anschluss of the "German Democratic Republic."

After Grass said, "Let those who want to judge, pass judgment," Hitchens takes up the challenge: "The first judgment is that you kept quiet about your past until you could win the Nobel Prize for literature. The second judgment is that you are not as important to German or to literary history as you think you are. The third judgment is that you will be remembered neither as a war criminal nor as an anti-Nazi hero, but more as a bit of a bloody fool."

What Planet Are You On?

Frankly, THE SCRAPBOOK is furious at the decision of the International Astronomical Union last week in Prague to strip Pluto of its planetary status.

This is not just a rebuke to the thousands of boys and girls who annually memorize the names of the nine planets--taking particular delight in our little icebound brother at the far reaches of the solar system--but appears to be a calculated, ad hominen, insult to Pluto as well.

A planet is now defined as a "celestial body that is in orbit around the sun, has sufficient mass for its self-gravity to overcome rigid body forces so that it assumes a . . . nearly round shape, and has cleared the neighborhood around its orbit." It's almost as if the telescope jockeys at the IAU tailored this one with Pluto specifically in mind, since its orbit is oblong, not round, and overlaps Neptune's.

In our view, if insults to celestial bodies are the order of the day, then how about that raucous slag heap of gas and molten silicate called Mercury, or the lumbering, oafish Jupiter, with its freeze-dried helium and unsightly red spot? By contrast, scrappy Pluto is one sleek, swift, austere ball of ice, and a complement to any solar system worth the name.