It’s one of the most iconic photographs in American history, but the Biden Administration wants it removed from veterans’ health care facilities across the country.
The inmates are running the asylum, Save Jerseyans!
Last Thursday, the Department of Veterans Affairs issued a memorandum announcing that the “VJ-DAY in Times Square” photograph – depicting a young male service member kissing a woman in New York City’s most famous public thoroughfare – should be removed from Veterans Health Administration facilities “in alignment with the [VA’s] commitment to maintaining a safe, respectful, and trauma-informed environment.”
“Employees have expressed discomfort with the display of this photograph,” the memo continues, “suggesting that its presence could be construed as a tacit endorsement of the inappropriate behavior it depicts.”
The legendary photograph was snapped by U.S. Navy photojournalist Victor Jorgensen on August 14, 1945, the day of Japan’s surrender and the official end of World War II; it ran the next day in the The New York Times and became an instant hit as a symbol of the war’s conclusion and the dawn of a new age. The sailor featured in the photo passed away in 2019; the woman (Greta Zimmer Friedman) had died three years earlier.
Friedman, an Austrian-born citizen who worked in toy design at the time of V-J Day, was interviewed by the Library of Congress in 2005.
“[I]t wasn’t my choice to be kissed. The guy just came over and kissed or grabbed,” she explained, but added that she “was grabbed by a sailor and it wasn’t that much of a kiss, it was more of a jubilant act that he didn’t have to go back, I found out later, he was so happy that he did not have to go back to the Pacific where they already had been through the war. And the reason he grabbed someone dressed like a nurse was that he just felt very grateful to nurses who took care of the wounded.”
