Eastwood On 'Flags Of Our Fathers'

One of the most famous images captured during World War II is a photo of a group of five Marines and one Navy corpsman planting the United States flag on Iwo Jima's Mt. Suribachi.

"It was the biggest battle in Marine Corps history, the most loss of life of any Marine campaign," director Clint Eastwood tells CBS News correspondent Bill Whitaker in an exclusive interview.

Eastwood's new movie, "Flags of our Fathers," based on the book of the same title, is the true story of how one image electrified the nation.

It turned the flag raisers into instant heroes. The government used the heroic pose to raise money at a critical point in the war, never publicizing that this wasn't exactly what it seemed.

The Iwo Jima battle was a bloody, inch-by-inch battle to take the volcanic island, which had airstrips that were crucial to the planned U.S. invasion of Japan. With the Japanese hiding in miles of underground tunnels, Marines said Iwo Jima was like hell.

John Huffhines was with the 5th Marine division at the time.

"You never get over it. It's always with you," Huffhines says.

It was on the fifth day of the invasion that the Marines took the high ground and planted a flag on Mt. Suribachi. The first flag is the one the Marines remember, they said at a recent reunion.

"The fighting stopped when the flag went up... It was quiet. Everybody stood up and cheered," Bob Day says.

Raymond Jacobs helped raise the first flag. He said an officer wanted it as a souvenir and ordered a bigger one to replace it. The raising of the second flag happened so quickly, the Marines thought it was nothing special. But it was.

"We often said that the first flag raising was for the Marines on the island on combat, whereas the second flag raising was for the American people back home," Jacobs says.

The battle for Iwo Jima raged for another month. Three of the men in the famous picture lost their lives there. One of them, Sgt. Mike Strank, was fighting next to Ralph Griffiths.

"A shell dropped in front of him. It took Sgt. Strank's heart and chest right out. Killed him, wounded me," Griffiths says.

As for the three flag raisers who survived the island, the pain of war would follow them until the end of their lives.

"I think they were all heroes," Eastwood says.

Eastwood says he's finishing a second movie on Iwo Jima, this one from the Japanese perspective. He wants the American audience to walk away from that movie thinking that "they are the good guys."

But by the same token, Eastwood wants Americans to know "that the price is pretty heavy and that the price is something the military people are always ready to stand by and pay ... and (the) American people should be appreciative of that."