Hi all,
Unconditional Surrender; The Kiss!
Here I am again as promised. We drove up to Tampa over the week end as the Captain had a class reunion. Tampa is about 150 miles from our home and we leisurely explored the little gulf coast towns along the way. I just love taking the back roads.
One can see the more scenic places of this beautiful country of ours. The Interstate highways are very helpful if you need to get somewhere in a hurry, but I find the slower I go, the more I appreciate all the things around me. This is a major benefit of retiring… stopping to smell the roses, as the saying goes. If we had taken the Interstate….we would not have seen the statue of the Kiss… which is a statue created from the original photograph that the photographer, Alfred Eisenstaedt titled …“Unconditional Surrender”…
The story goes something like this….and no, even though I am a retired person now…I was not there! 🙂 I am just relating the story as it was told to me. 😉
At the end of World War II, on the day the surrender of Japan was announced, one of the naval ships in port in New York City allowed sailors to go ashore. There was joy everywhere and many sailors were hugging everyone and many civilians were doing the same. It so happened there was a photographer in Times Square and he was snapping photos of all the revelry. As you will note in the picture I have attached…..a nurse and a sailor are sharing a kiss. In all the excitement, the photographer did not get the names of the two people kissing and as it turned out, the two did not know each other.
The picture shows the sailor literally sweeping the nurse into his arms and kissing her. How romantic! I know I am a bit of a romantic….as my novels will reveal when I finish them. But I digress, Back to the photograph. The photo was published in Life Magazine and there was much confusion over the identity of the couple. Over the years, several men and women came forward and claimed to be the subjects in the photo. It is my understanding that to this day there is still controversy over the actual names of the sailor and the nurse. There is speculation that the nurse was actually a dental assistant and when she heard the news that the war was over, she went into Times Square on her lunch hour and a sailor came rushing past her and stopped in his tracks, wrapped her in his arms and planted a big kiss. Sigh…the heroines in my books should be so lucky!
The picture I have attached is of the statue permanently affixed to a spot in downtown Sarasota, Florida. I understand there are other replicas of this kiss in other parts of the country. Do any of you have any information about any of the other statues or more information about this famous Photograph? I would love to hear more.
Me
Please comment, I'd love to hear from you.