Eagle Feathers #198 – The First of March

By Bob (Monty) Doherty

On March 1, 1945, in the twilight of World War II in Europe, four-term elected President Franklin Delano Roosevelt made his last speech before Congress. The President, a polio victim, spoke officially for the first time while seated, setting aside his heavy leg braces. He would succumb to the disease within the following month.

On that day, he reported on the secret Yalta Conference held in the Crimea section of the Soviet Union. He attended the meeting with the British leader Winston Churchill and the Russian leader Joseph Stalin, who were referred to at that time as the world’s “Big Three.” The meeting was to create Europe’s post-war structuring and to orchestrate the future birth of the United Nations. In his eyes, it was the only way to ward off future world wars; and for this, he was honored throughout the world.
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Big three plan future moves

Locally, he is remembered by Massachusetts on Route 93’s Roosevelt Circle in Medford. The Cambridge Housing Authority’s Roosevelt Towers, abutting the Somerville line, also honors him. The most common remembrance of this great man is with us every day as part of our currency. Every time we reach into our pockets and see his image on our small thin dimes, we should remember the enormous gratitude our collective freedom is owed to him.
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For twenty-one of his toughest years as Governor of New York and President of the United States, he had a woman from Somerville at his side. Somerville High School graduate Marguerite “Missy“ LeHand was his personal secretary during peace and war.
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Halfway around the world on the Island of Iwo Jima on March 1, 1945, another Somerville High graduate gave the supreme sacrifice on the same day as the President’s last speech to Congress.
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Eight days before, twenty-five-yea-old Marine Sergeant Henry Hansen helped raise the first foreign flag on the soil of the Japanese Empire. That ensign was the American Flag. Hansen was very familiar with flags because he was his company’s honored platoon guide or flag bearer.
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How appropriate, a young Marine from Somerville where General George Washington raised the first flag on Prospect Hill was to be instrumental in flying the first two American flags over Iwo Jima. Sergeant Henry Hansen was killed on March 1, 1945, from a machine gun burst on the tenth day of battle. Hansen’s Lieutenant, who helped raise the first flag, was killed on March 3, Somerville’s birthday.

It was seventy-five years ago this week that Somerville’s hero, Sergeant Henry O. Hansen, raised the Flags of Iwo Jima.
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