An investigation by the Marine Corps determined that one of the most famous photographs of all time — depicting the raising of the American flag over Iwo Jima in World War II — has been misidentified for more than 70 years.

The New York Times reports: “The inquiry found that a private first class named Harold Schultz was one of the six men in the Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph. And it determined that a Navy hospital corpsman, John Bradley, whose son wrote a best-selling book about his father’s role in the flag-raising that was made into a movie directed by Clint Eastwood, was not actually in the image.”

The report adds: “Mr. Schultz, a mail sorter who died in 1995 at the age of 70, never publicly acknowledged that he was in the photograph. According to his stepdaughter, he discussed it only once with his family, mentioning it briefly one night during dinner in the early 1990s as they talked about the Iwo Jima battle.”

The investigation was launched after questions arose during production of a documentary, “The Unknown Flag Raiser of Iwo Jima.” The doc is set to air July 3 on the Smithsonian Channel.

You can see the famous flag-raising photo by clicking on the link to The New York Times near the top of this story.

Here’s a re-enactment of the flag raising from the John Wayne movie “Sands of Iwo Jima” …