Angelo Klonis, a Greek migrant from Kefalonia, is the soldier in one of the best-known American photographs of World War II.
Photojournalist W. Eugene Smith took the picture for LIFE magazine on Saipan in 1944. Decades later, it appeared on a US postage stamp and on the cover of a LIFE book marking 50 years since the war.
Who was Angelo Klonis?
Angelo Klonis, also known as Evangelos Klonis or Clonis, grew up on the Ionian island of Kefalonia. He left as a teenage stowaway in the 1930s and reached the United States with almost nothing.
By 1938, he had settled in Santa Fe, New Mexico, where he worked at the Mayflower Café on the Plaza, the Santa Fe Reporter said. Friends remembered him as a hard worker and a sharp dresser.
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After Pearl Harbor, he joined the US Army in 1942. Military service also offered immigrant volunteers a path to citizenship.
Family accounts say he enlisted after learning that German forces had killed his parents in Greece. That story appears on a display about him in New York.
His homeland was fighting its own war at the time. Greeks still mark their 1940 defiance every year on OXI Day, 28 October.
The photograph that became a symbol
In the best-known frame, a bearded soldier looks back over his shoulder. He has a cigarette in his mouth and a rifle across his back.
For many Americans, that face became the face of the war. Yet for decades, few people knew that the soldier was Angelo Klonis.
The image appeared in print as early as 1946. In 1991, it reached a far wider audience on the cover of LIFE: World War II, a Time-Life anniversary book.
Later, in 2002, the US Postal Service put another frame of Angelo Klonis on a 37-cent stamp. The image, Frontline Soldier with Canteen, Saipan, was part of its Masters of American Photography series.
At first, Postal Service researchers struggled to name the soldier. Then a curator from Smith’s archive in Tucson, Arizona, saw a photo from the same shoot hanging in a Santa Fe bar.
That bar was Evangelo’s, which Angelo Klonis opened in 1970. His son Nick later ran it.
A son’s long search
Angelo Klonis rarely spoke about his war service, and he died in 1989. His son Nick then searched for years for the photo his father had described.
In 1991, Nick finally found it on the LIFE book cover. It matched his father’s description exactly.
Even so, the record is not simple, because official files are thin. A 1973 fire at the US Army records centre in St Louis destroyed many service files, so some details may never be confirmed. His discharge papers list service in North Africa and Europe, including Normandy, but not Saipan.
Researchers working with the family later pointed to Smith’s own archive as evidence that he was on Saipan. They also matched other soldiers in the photos to Klonis family snapshots. As a result, they concluded that Angelo Klonis was the man in Smith’s frames.
However, some still dispute the identity. In 2023, Nick Klonis sued Leatherneck magazine over a story naming a US Marine, T.E. Underwood, as the man in the photos, the Santa Fe New Mexican reported.
Honouring Angelo Klonis in Queens
Today, a display about Angelo Klonis hangs at the Hellenic American Project in Flushing, Queens. Director Dr Nicolas Alexiou has made the story part of its Greek American history collection.
“A Greek American was the symbol of the American soldier,” Dr Alexiou said.
In addition, the display calls him an anonymous American soldier who “bravely fought for freedom”. It also says he received many medals for his service, and the Queens Gazette article on the display adds that he later led a quiet life in Santa Fe.
Many critics credit Smith, who died in 1978, with taking the photo essay to its fullest form. His pictures of the war shaped how Americans saw their soldiers.
For Greek Americans, the photo now carries a second meaning. It shows a young man from Kefalonia who became, for many, the face of America at war.
Source: Queens Gazette
