There were two flag raisings on Mount Suribachi and even Joe Rosenthal, who took the iconic photo, wasn’t aware of the confusion it would later cause. My theory is that Bradley was in the first one and afterwards in the fog of war, merely assumed that he was being honored for that, rather than the second one which became so famous.
At the time the photo was taken, no one knew the names of the six men and in all probability they weren’t aware of who was where or doing what either. All six had been fighting and experiencing the horror of the battle; they were still under sporadic fire and what photography claimed as the prize of World War II was to them merely another mundane moment in the midst of the fear and carnage that would drag on for several more weeks.
As another poster noted, Bradley was a very honorable man. He was actually a Navy Corpsman who won the Navy Cross for his heroism while treating wounded Marines on the beach and was himself wounded so grievously that he wasn’t expected to survive. He never tried to capitalize on his role, avoided all reporters and historians and not even his family was aware of his Navy Cross until they found it after his death decades later.
People involved in incredibly stressful situations frequently can’t remember who is standing next to them, what they were doing or how they behaved. I can’t imagine that the stress of Iwo Jima was any different, especially considering the nature of what those men were involved in. So, John Bradley gets a pass in my book. Nothing in his personality or future years ever had the slightest hint of dishonesty or underhandedness. Just the fact that he downplayed his role in that moment if proof of his honor.
“IS proof of his honor.”