The first flag was too small to easily see, and like Drew said, had been raised under combat conditions (a skirmish erupted at the crest). Still, it boosted morale of the men below and all the ships offshore. So they found a much bigger flag, and asked another group to go right back up and replace the smaller one. They went right back up Suribachi after the first group. The Marines needed a bigger flagpole, and found the heavy, pipe, which required a lot of them to lift and raise. The embedded photographers went everywhere with the Marines, and of course looked for good photo ops, but also just filmed and shot combat scenes. I wouldn't say the above makes anything "staged", it was just shot as it happened. Worrying about what flag was first and who held which part of which pole is minutia, and not looking at the big picture. That is that the Marines fought their hardest battle, and most of the people that are in the larger famous shot died within a few days in combat there on Iwo Jima.
While quite a bit was recently done to correct who actually participated in that second flag raising, since that photograph is what the equally famous statue is based
upon, I was surprised that less public attention hasn't been given to those who raised the first flag, under even more dire conditions. Having that knowledge readily
available to any academic isn't the same thing as publicly memorializing it to the same degree. But that kind of photography... no thanks. Talk about occupational
hazards!
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