The Art of the Brick

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viCtor’s war

iwo JiMa

rePliCa

One of the unexpected, wonderful, and often

perplexing things about my journey as an artist

is that I am asked to do commissions. I usually

politely decline, but in 2006, I was honored to

be asked to re-create Joe Rosenthal’s famous

picture for the opening of the National Museum

of the Marine Corps in Quantico, Virginia. Like

most Americans, I’d seen the picture countless

times and had heard the story of Franklin

Sousley, Harlon Block, Michael Strank, John

Bradley, Rene Gagnon, and Ira Hayes, the six

servicemen depicted. When I began the project,

I was actually looking forward to immersing

myself in that famous American moment on

Mount Suribachi and learning a little more about

it. What I wasn’t expecting, however, was the

personal memories that it would trigger.

Of the men who fought on Iwo Jima,

uncommon valor was a common virtue.

—Fleet Admiral Chester W. Nimitz

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My father’s father, Victor Sawaya, owned and

ran a pool hall in Minot, North Dakota, when

the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor. He was

driving when the news came over the radio, and

he immediately decided to close his business

and join the US Army. He served in the Pacific

Theatre in places like Guam and Okinawa but,

like many men of his generation, seldom spoke

of it upon his return. My father grew up knowing

that his father had served, but not a whole lot

more. His guess was that Victor wanted to put

the war behind him and devote his energies to

raising his family in peacetime.

When I began working on Iwo Jima, I suddenly

had this memory of my grandfather from when I

was 10 or 11. At this point in time he was quite

old and unwell. He couldn’t look after himself

anymore, and we’d had to move him out of

his home and into a VA hospital. As we were

clearing out some of his stuff in the house, my

father and I found a box. Within this box was

a series of smaller boxes containing Victor’s

military memorabilia. There were the sorts of

things that you might expect: military medals,

letters from home. Documents listed him as

serving in the 259th Ordnance Company and

being on the mailing list for the 74th Field

Hospital. But the thing that really hit my father

and I hard was a series of photographs from

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Victor’s time in the war. Some of them were of

him, taken in various places by other people. But

others were taken by him—graphic depictions

of wartime. Some of them showed dead bodies;

another showed skulls. The reality of war.

It was a harrowing discovery for a young boy

to make, and I remember my father also being

quite shocked. His father had never mentioned

the existence of the box or its contents.

Unfortunately, Victor was by then no longer in a

state of mind for us to ask him about it. So we

never knew much more than the faint outline of

war that Vic’s photographs drew for us. When I

studied Rosenthal’s picture, I couldn’t help but

think of my grandfather’s box of lost memories

and of all the photographs that the millions

of other Americans who’d served had stashed

away in attics and trunks, unseen and perhaps

forgotten.