Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima (Japanese: 硫黄島の星条旗, Hepburn: Iōjima no Seijōki) is an iconic photograph of six United States Marines raising the U.S. flag atop Mount Suribachi during the Battle of Iwo Jima in the final stages of the Pacific War. Taken by Joe Rosenthal of the Associated Press on February 23, 1945, the photograph was published in Sunday newspapers two days later and reprinted in thousands of publications. It won the 1945 Pulitzer Prize for Photography and has come to be regarded in the United States as one of the most recognizable images of World War II. The iconic flag raising, by the six serving in the 5th Marine Division, occurred in the early afternoon, after the mountaintop had been captured and a smaller flag had been raised that morning.