The Outsider

The true story of World War II hero Ira Hamilton Hayes, a Pima Indian from an Arizona reservation, is one of the great American tragedies and one that deals with complex issues of personal identity, national fame and racial prejudice. Hayes had never ventured off his tribal land until he left to enlist in the Marines. After a grueling stint in Boot Camp, he was transferred to the Pacific where he saw action in the bloody fighting at Iwo Jima. After he was identified as one of the soldiers lifting the American flag on Mt. Suribachi in Joe Rosenthal’s famous photograph, he was summoned to Washington, D.C. by the President and, along with the surviving members of the men in the photograph, was drafted into participating in a war bond drive to raise money for the armed forces. Still suffering from grief and depression from his war experiences and the deaths of his Marine friends, Hayes quickly went into a downward spiral, acerbated by his new-found taste for alcohol and the pressures of being trotted out as a national hero in endless public appearances. Even his own tribal community tried to pressure him to become a Washington lobbyist in the hope he could improve living conditions on the reservation but his drinking problem sabotaged any efforts he made. He then disappeared from the public eye, working in menial jobs and getting arrested habitually for drunkenness. Hayes eventually returned to his reservation a broken man and died of exposure after a night of heavy drinking on January 24, 1955. —TCM