17-year-old Ira Hamilton Hayes has never been off the Pima reservation in Arizona until he enlists in the United States Marine Corps.

A morose and traumatized Hayes returns home, where he is proclaimed a hero and recruited to help sell war bonds to the public.

Hayes wishes to be left alone, but a tribal chief implores him to go to Washington, D.C., on his people's behalf to seek political support for an irrigation bill.

He begins drinking again and goes off into the hills, where he dies of exposure to the elements ten years after the Iwo Jima battle.

The movie was filmed on location at the Gila River Indian Reservation in Arizona, Marine Corps Recruit Depot San Diego, Camp Calvin B. Matthews in California, Soldier Field in Chicago, San Diego, the Marine Corps War Memorial at Arlington, Virginia, Arlington National Cemetery, and at Universal Studios in California.