"Joe Rosenthal, whose photograph of U.S. servicemen raising the flag over Iwo Jima in World War II became an enduring American symbol, died Sunday at age 94.

He died at an assisted living center in San Francisco, according to The San Francisco Chronicle, the newspaper where he worked for 35 years until his retirement in 1981.

Though his photography career spanned more than 50 years, Rosenthal is best remembered for his single shot of the flag raising at the top of Mount Suribachi on Feb. 23, 1945.

The image, of weary men in helmets setting up a flag pole on craggy rock as the stars and stripes flutter above them, was an instant sensation when it was published.

Rosenthal's picture won the Pulitzer Prize and has been reproduced countless times ? printed on postage stamps, engraved on the back of a commemorative silver dollar, and cast in bronze at the Marine Corps Memorial in Arlington, Va., overlooking the nation's capital. The scene inspired books, movies and songs about the men in the photograph.

""Joe maintained his humility that it was just a happenstance shot. He never tried to get ahead of the story,"" says James Bradley, son of one of the Marines in the photograph and author of Flags of Our Fathers, a book about Rosenthal's photo. ""It was just a shot that represented the ordinary American out there doing his duty.""

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Source: PDNOnline"