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IRA HAYES is dead. Arizona's hero of the World War II Iwo Jima flag raising on Mount Suribachi was found dead at sunrise yesterday near his home at the Indian village of Bapchule, 14 miles from Sacaton. He won nationwide acclaim in 1945 as a symbol of the courage and strength that was America's fighting men.

But he died in loneliness, a sacrifice to a weakness he couldn't whip an undeniable thirst for liquor. Too much alcohol and then too much exposure in freezing weather caused his death, a doctor said. THE STOCKY, 32-year-old Pima Indian spent Sunday afternoon and evening with friends. Then Hayes left in cheerful mood about 7 p.m. He was going home. But he never got there. A friend found his body, crumpled on the ground. It was finis in a strange chapter of Americana. Hayes joined the UJ5. Marines In 1942. As a sharpshooter, he fought through the steaming jungles of Bougainville and other Pad-, f ic islands to the terror that was the jutting rock of Iwo Jima. "WE HTT THE beach on Iwo' with. 250 men in my company,' Hayes once recalled, "and left with 27 a month and half later." Most . of his buddies were gone. ' He was corporal of the flag-raising detail of six men and only he and two others survived the Iwo Jima fighting. I still think of those things ail the time," he said. A news photo of the flag-raising brought acclaim to Hayes and others as heroes of Iwo. Snapped by Associated Press Photographer Joe Rosenthal, it told the story of the American fighting man better than most pictures of the war. IT BECAME the trigger for patriotic campaigns in the United States as the great war was drawing to a close. And the surviving marines in the photo became typical of all that is best. Hayes and the others were brought home with great pomp and ceremony, shook hands with the President, posed for photos, spoke in war bond drives, were feted and feasted. Then came war's end. Peace was not kindly to the . genial young man who was born at Sacaton to Mr. and Mrs. Joe Hayes. Ira had entered the service of his country after completing the 11th jrade at Phoenix Indian School. AFTER THE war, he wandered from his reservation home to try to find a place in the white man's world, turned to the bottle again and again, and slipped to Chicago's Skid Row. Friends and strangers touched by a chance to repay the debt to all fighting men found him jobs, aided,', and encouraged him. .

But his fight .against his thirst was a losing one. . After hitting the jails, and newspaper headlines for drunks enness in Los Angeles and Phoenix, he retreated 15 months ago to the reservation. "I guess I'm just no good," he told newsmen. "I'VE HAD a lot of chances, but just when things start looking good, I get that craving for whisky and foul up." No good? The man who took the celebrated photo doesn't share that opinion. "He was quiet-spoken and he was really a great guy," said Rosenthal, now a photographer for the San Francisco Chronicle. "There was no secret about his drinking, but I think it was a psychological quirk. It had something to do with his position as a hero after the war. "He told me he was getting credit for a lot of things that other men deserve." IN MANCHESTER, N. H., Rene Gagnon, one of the two remaining survivors of the flag raising on Iwo Jima, said last night he "very much regretted" to hear of the death of his old buddy. "He was a great guy a modest guy who didn't like the " spotlight," Gagnon said. He recalled how he and Hayes had served together between 1943 and 1945 in such battles as those on Tarawa, Saipan, and Iwo. , Gagnon said he hoped he would be able to attend the funeral. He also expressed hope the only other member of the flag-raising group still living John Bradley of Milwaukee will be able to attend.

Ira Hamilton Hayes