WWII vet who provided flag on iwo jima has died

Alan Wood, a World War II veteran credited with providing the flag in the famous flag-raising on Iwo Jima, has died. He was 90. Wood died on 18 April of natural causes at his Sierra Madre home, his son Steven Wood said on Saturday. Wood was a 22-year-old Navy officer in charge of communications on a landing ship on Iwo Jima’s shores on 23 February 1945 when a Marine asked him for the biggest flag that he could find. After five days of fighting to capture the Japanese-held island, US forces had managed to scale Mount Suribachi to hoist an American flag. Wood happened to have a 37-square-foot flag he had found months before in a Pearl Harbor Navy depot.