One Devastating Picture that Changed the Way America Fought World War Two
The positive impact one photograph had on America’s fighting spirit
Call it a small but meaningful story within the colossal narrative of World War Two, an editorial piece that appeared in the September 20, 1943, issue of LIFE magazine and forever changed how the war was viewed by the folks on the home front.
Titled “Three Americans,” it carried the subtitle: “Where these boys fell, a part of freedom fell: We must resurrect it in their name.” And there next to the editorial was a black and white, full-page photograph showing three dead American soldiers just as they had fallen in battle ten months earlier on the beach at Buna, New Guinea in the Pacific.
Nearly two years after Pearl Harbor, this was the first time the American public saw up close the true cost of defending freedom. No slogans, flags or marching bands. No parades. Just three lifeless bodies half-buried in the tidal sands. This, the picture said, is what was happening overseas. Sons and brothers and fathers were fighting and dying in far-off places nobody had ever heard of before.
This picture wasn’t protest. It was war — in all its cold finality. Everyone knew it was a war that had to be fought. But this powerful image taken by LIFE photographer George Strock, who, like many other correspondents during World War Two, was on the front lines risking his own life to do his job, served a stark reminder to America: Before this war is over a lot of your boys are not going to be coming home.
At the same time, it became a rallying cry for the country to carry on the fight, no matter the cost.
To quote, in part, from the editorial:
Here lie three Americans.
What shall we say of them?…Shall we say that this is a fine thing, that they should give their lives for their country?…Why print this picture anyway of three American boys, dead on an alien shore?
The reason is that words are never enough. The eye sees. The mind knows. The heart feels. But the words do not exist to make us see, or know, or feel what it is like, what actually happens.
So that it is not just these boys who have fallen here, it is freedom that has fallen. It is our task to cause it to rise again.
To this point in the war, government censors had strictly forbidden public release of any photographs showing dead American soldiers for fear that it would be too demoralizing for the folks back home.
And, of course, this was long before the advent of television and instantaneous satellite broadcasting. Print media and cinema newsreels were all there was in terms of war coverage. But from the moment this powerful, albeit gruesome, photograph was taken, staff members at LIFE had been pushing hard to get permission to publish it.
By 1943, officials at LIFE and in the government argued the country was becoming almost complacent when it came to the war being fought ‘over there.’ The sale of war bonds was declining. Absenteeism in the wartime industries was creeping upward.
This was a story that had to be told. For the good of the war effort, the editors said, certain realities had to be brought back home, and no, they weren’t all going to be pretty.
How strong were we as a nation? Could we withstand seeing the truth? Where exactly was the tipping point in the balance between our fighting morale, our will to win, and bearing witness to all that was being lost? And what about the First Amendment right to free speech?
All critical questions in time of war.
It took nine months and a lot of administrative wrangling to finally convince the military powers-that-be, including President Franklin Roosevelt, who would have the final say on this issue. Weighing the good versus the bad of showing this image, Roosevelt eventually gave permission and the issue hit newsstands in late September. Keep in mind this was 1943, and Allied victory was anything but certain.
Public reaction to the story was immediate and overwhelming. Within days, hundreds of thousands of letters poured in from soldiers and parents of soldiers across the country, the vast majority in favor of what LIFE magazine did.
One reader from Illinois may have put it best: “Your Picture of the Week is a terrible thing but I’m glad there is one American magazine that had the courage to print it.”
History would prove there was indeed a long road still to go, and many a family would bear the heaviest burden of all before it was over. But here is where the power of a free press prevailed. Here is where the American heroes at home showed they could stomach the fight, no matter what it took.
And it is precisely for that reason that, as was originally put forth in that now-famous LIFE editorial, where freedom had fallen it would indeed rise again.
