For the first four days of the battle, the Japanese had commanded this tactically useful observation post. Now the roles were reversed; the Americans owned Suribachi, and they had a flag to prove it. Marines of Company E, 2nd Battalion pulled a 10-foot length of lead pipe out of the rubble—it had connected a water cistern to a bunker beneath the summit—and rigged it as a flagpole. At 10:20 a.m., they raised their battalion flag. Observers to the north, and on ships offshore, were overjoyed. Lieutenant Ronald Thomas recalled, “Everyone yelled and I suppose some cried.”48 Brigadier General Leo
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