Monument to Iwo Jima Flag-Raising Near Quantico Vandalized

A Virginia man allegedly beheaded one of six statues at the Iwo Jima monument near the Quantico Marine base, causing what police estimated was hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage.

According to the incident report, Prince William County police arrived at the site Wednesday night to find 27-year-old Miguel Alonso Maldonado Soriano “actively damaging the statue with a sledgehammer.” The attack cost one of the monument’s Marines his head and left a second figure’s helmet and face “chipped and gouged.” The stone bayonet from the rifle carved over the back of a third statue was also missing.

Maldonado Soriano, 27, of Stafford, was arrested and faces two felony charges, injury to a monument and destruction of property and a misdemeanor charge of trespass with intent to damage property. A representative for the attorney assigned to Maldonado Soriano’s case declined to comment at the time of writing. He is being held without bond pending a court appearance.

The vandalized monument is a smaller version of Arlington’s Marine Corps War Memorial, which depicts a scene captured in a Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph by Joe Rosenthal of the Associated Press: Six US Marines raise the US flag atop Mount Suribachi on the Japanese island of Iwo Jima during World War II. (Rosenthal actually captured the second flag raising on the mountaintop, and for decades he was accused of staging the scene, an accusation he denied until his death.)

The US and Japanese militaries fought fiercely for control of the tactically valuable island, which, if taken, would mark the first Japanese home territory captured by the Americans. Of the six Marines in the photograph, only three survived the war. Three were killed within weeks of the photograph, before the battle for the mountaintop officially ended.