The Ballad of Ira Hayes (Peter La Farge cover) Lyrics
I joined just to comment on this song. As a Marine I share a bond with every other Marine past, present, and future. Luckily I discovered this song. It does a perfect job describing the inner conflict that many Marines feel after returning home. Marines do not want fame and adoration, we only want RESPECT! Ira Hayes was a hero to many Americans, but he knew, as all Marines know, that the only heroes are the ones who die in combat. The rest of us are just lucky enough to have called them brother.
I saw Flags of Our Fathers yesterday...sad that I've known this song for some years without ever really knowing the story of Ira Hayes.
Ira Hayes was the marine who went up Hirajima Hill in the famous picture with the marines holding up the flag...then when he went back home he died a drunk cus he was an indian and we were still a racist country
Jesus Christ....it's NOT HIRAJIMA it's "IWO JIMA", and it's NOT HIRAJIMA hill, it MOUNT SURABACHI, on which the flag was raised. You are correct Ira Hayes and five others raised the flag on the Mount, to show the end of Japanese control of the island. Only three survived Iwo Jima though. The picture was so loved by the public that President Franklin D. Roosevelt, had the remaining three survivors of which Ira was one, shipped home to aid war bond drives. Ira Hayes though asked to be sent back to the front lines, stating that "sometimes I wish that guy had never made that picture". Yes America was racist against indians, but Ira Hayes didn't die because of racism. After the war Ira returned to his reservation, disillusion by what he felt to be unneccesary adoration. Ira became a drunk, because he could not handle, the fact that he had been made a hero just because of one photo. Ira died in 1955 of exposure...
I can't believe so few people have commented on Johnny Cash, while horrible bands like fall out boy are overflowed. It is a shame where American music has gone. Kids need to learn about the classics, instead of the garbage mtv force-feeds them.
It's a great song, need more be said.
A man who turns his back on his family, for a world he doesnt understand or can cope with. Turns to drink, dies alone.
Ira Hamilton Hayes (January 12, 1923 – January 24, 1955) was a United States Marine of Native American descent and survivor of World War II's Battle of Iwo Jima. He was one of six Marines, along with a US Navy corpsman, in the iconic photograph of the flag raising on Iwo Jima.
After the war, Hayes attempted to lead an anonymous life. But it didn't turn out that way. "I kept getting hundreds of letters. And people would drive through the reservation, walk up to me and ask, 'Are you the Indian who raised the flag on Iwo Jima'?"
Referring to his alcoholism, he once said: "I was sick. I guess I was about to crack up thinking about all my good buddies. They were better men than me and they're not coming back. Much less back to the White House, like me." After the war, Hayes accumulated some fifty arrests for drunkenness.
On January 24, 1955, Hayes was found dead near an abandoned hut close to his home on the Gila River Indian Reservation. He had been drinking and playing cards with several other men, including his brothers Kenny and Vernon, and another fellow Pima named Henry Setoyant. The coroner concluded that Hayes' death was due to exposure and too much alcohol. Ira Hayes was 32.
Hayes was buried in Arlington National Cemetery. At the funeral, fellow flag-raiser Rene Gagnon said of him: "Let's say he had a little dream in his heart that someday the Indian would be like the white man — be able to walk all over the United States."
I totally agree with you zmilla111
watch 'flags of our fathers' if you wanna see him