Simulacrum: Flags of Our Fathers (by Andrew Lelea)

http://c.photoshelter.com/img-get/I0000f6mrXOmQVp8/s

          In 1954, Felix DeWeldon structured these six figures with steel, underlying skeletons, covered with muscles and skin.  The six brave men who raised the flag—Ira Hayes, Franklin Sousley, John Bradley, Harlon Block, Michael Strank, and Rene Gagnon—stand 32 feet high in the monument that is displayed in Washington DC.  The 60-foot flagpole, with a cloth flag flying at the end, puts the statue at 78 feet tall, making it the world’s tallest bronze statue.  Although the government didn’t help pay for it, people were able to raise the $850,000 that the monument cost.  “Uncommon Valor was a Common Virtue” is the phrase inscribed below the monument. 

         The Flags of Our Fathers monument commemorates the six men who raised an American Flag in Iwo Jima, Japan in 1945.The fact that the Flags of Our Fathers monument is in Washington DC and not in a less worthy location proves that it is a very honorable display in all its grandeur.  The original photo taken of the flag raising caught the eyes of     people across the nation; merely two days after the citizens in the United States laid eyes on the photo, Senators called for a national monument to honor the picture.  Nothing like the monument has ever been seen before.

http://www.iwojima.com/statue/index.htm