| Aug 15 |
VJ Day (Victory
over Japan Day)
A Japanese military and
a government official sign the document of surrender in Tokyo Bay;
MacArthur concludes :
We are gathered here,
representatives of the major warring powers, to conclude a solemn
agreement whereby peace may be restored. The issues involving divergent
ideals and ideologies, have been determined on the battlefields of the
world and hence are not for our discussion or debate. Nor is it for us
here to meet, representing as we do a majority of the people of the
earth, in a spirit of distrust, malice, or hatred. but rather it is for
us, both victors and vanquished, to serve, committing all peoples
unreservedly to faithful compliance with the understanding they are here
formally to assume. It is my earnest hope, indeed the hope of all
mankind, that form this solemn occasion a better world shall emerge out
of the blood and carnage of the past . . . a world dedicated to the
dignity of man . . . Let us pray that peace be restored tot he world,
and that God will preserve it always. These proceedings are closed.
Nimitz broadcast to the
Fleet upon the signing of surrender.
On board all naval
vessels at sea and in port, and at our many island bases in the Pacific,
there is rejoicing and thanksgiving. The long and bitter struggle . . .
is at an end. . . .
Today all freedom-loving peoples of the world rejoice in the victory
and feel pride in the accomplishments of our combined forces. We also
pay tribute to those who defended our freedom at the cost of their
lives.
On Guam is a military cemetery in a green valley not far from my
headquarters. The ordered rows of white crosses stand as reminders of
the heavy cost we have paid for victory. On these crosses are the names
of American soldiers, sailors, and marines -- . . . ---names that are a
cross-section of democracy They fought together as brothers in arms;
they died together and now they sleep side by side. To them we have a
solemn obligation -- the obligation to insure that their sacrifice will
help to make this a better and safer world in which to live.
Now we turn to the great tasks of reconstruction and restoration. I
am confident that we will be able to apply the same skill,
resourcefulness and keen thinking to these problems as were applied to
the problems of winning the victory.
On acceptance of
surrender of the Japanese North Pacific forces, Fletcher says,
"Recalling the rape of
Nanking, the treachery of Pearl Harbor, the Death March of Bataan, and
the murder, torture, and starvation of our comrades in arms, ours will
not be an occupation in the Japanese manner. We have shown the Japanese
and the world the superiority of our arms. We must now demonstrate to
the world and the Japanese people the superiority of these standards of
justice and decency for which we fought."
THE SMACK SEEN ROUND THE WORLD
The pretty
arc of the nurse and the seaman's stylish stance made a "one in a million"
composition, says Eisie. "They were very elegant, like sculpture."
From the October 1980 issue of
LIFE
WHO IS THE KISSING SAILOR?
Our story so far: It all started coming back to pretty Edith Shain as she
studied once more the famous picture of the nurse being embraced by the
sailor there in Times Square that glorious V-J Day 35 years ago. She
decided the time had come to declare her identity as the woman in Alfred
Eisenstaedt's photograph. Eisie, delighted with the discovery, flew to
Beverly Hills to photograph Edith as she appears today at 62--and that
story ran in LIFE in August, 1980, along with a request for the real
sailor to please step forward. Thus it was that memories stirred old
seafaring hearts across the land, moments of danger and tossing seas and
those too-brief winsome moments ashore. Then, most vividly, that
unforgettable day--August 15, 1945--when any swabbie worth his
bell-bottoms kissed any girl within reach. No fewer than 10 sailors, as
well as two more nurses, have managed to recall to the last detail how it
happened and how they happened to be in Times Square--persuading us that
all their stories are true. But who is in the picture? And who kissed
whom? Truth be told, only Eisie (who passed away on Wednesday, August 23
at the age of 96) ever knew the answer. But since his notes and other
negatives have vanished, he couldn't make a final choice. It leaves us to
wonder if, in some almost supernatural way, through the magic of his
photographic artistry he didn't manage to get a picture of them all...
The sailor, says Bill
Swicegood, "looks exactly like I looked--the hands, the body,
everything," including, he notes, his then 32-inch waist. The odds too are
on his side, says Swicegood, 55, a Kansas City, Mo., artist. "I must have
kissed a thousand women that day in Times Square." Bill says his claim has
achieved the status of local oral history due to all the years he has
hauled out that picture in boastful kiss-and-tell.
That distinctive way his hairline
comes to a point at the temple--that cinches it, believes
Clarence "Bud" Harding. "My hair stylist," reports Bud, 60, a
printer at the Indianapolis Star and News, "says very few people have
that." But that's not all, notes Harding, pointing to his clincher, the
hands match up just right. "I also have a bulging vein," Bud says,
elbowing aside any lingering doubts, "on my right arm when I apply
pressure."
When Wallace C. Fowler
confessed to his wife that he was the exuberant sailor, she retorted that
that sailor appeared to be, well, taller. "Consequently," says the five-
foot-seven Fowler, 55 of Tampa, Fla., "I perished the thought." But the
blissful memory lingered. Fowler hit upon an explanation for the apparent
discrepancy: "I realized that the angle of the camera could give a taller
impression."
George Mendonsa,
57, who now runs a fish business in Newport, R.I., recalls the moment
clearly. "I had quite a few drinks that day," he says, and I considered
her one of the troops--she was a nurse." George says that in the
photograph, dangling from his pants pocket, is his newly acquired
Quartermaster 1st Class rating patch, which he couldn't take time to sew
on. He was just too busy with victory ceremonies.
"It suddenly hit me," says
Jack Russell, "that our ship wouldn't be going to
Japan and that the whole terrible thing was ending." Russell, now a
54-year-old psychologist in Whittier, Calif., recalls that he immediately
began to manifest a high affect. "I started grabbing girls like everyone
else was doing and started kissing." His clinical proof that he is the
man: "My unusual left-handed kissing clutch."
Marvin Kingsbury
avers, "I was the only one on the street who did anything like that just
then." The instant news was flashed of the Japanese surrender, recalls
Kingsbury, 54, a Round Lake Beach, Ill., school custodian, he turned to
three pals and cried, "The first girls we come to, grab 'em and kiss 'em."
To strengthen his claim, Marvin points to a mole he can discern on his
right cheek.
James Kearney, 59,
a refrigeration mechanic at Harvard University and second from left in the
group of beer drinkers notes that although he stood five feet eight inches
tall in 1945, he is nonetheless the shabby in the picture. "That day I
felt ten feet tall!"
Donald Bonsack, 56,
of Germantown, N.Y., at last decided, "I've lived with this for so long, I
guess I can take it." His explanation: the bare sleeve. "I had a rate on
my right arm but I had lost it for insubordination--which I won't go into.
I was a hell-raiser then."
Arthur Leask, 53 a
teacher of history both at Point Pleasant Beach high school and Ocean
County College in New Jersey, says he held back the truth for years, but
he recollects precisely how he kissed the nurse--and the little old lady
in the background too.
John Edmonson, 53,
of Charlotte, N.C., explains his lack of stripe: he had joined just months
before. On a pass at the time, Edmondson had gone to Times Square, "where
a lot of kissing was going on." He says, "That's my poise."
The brother and sister of
Walker Irving, who died in 1951, remember the picture
hanging in the family home. Walker, holding a niece above, called his
folks in Portland, Maine, that August to tell them he was in LIFE, and he
immediately became "a famous-faced man." For the Irvings, there is just no
question about the identity of the sailor: "Look at those hands!"
FAIR MAIDS FROM AFAR
CLAIM THEY WERE KISSED
"Let me tell you," says
Edith Shain, "the sun goes up, the sun goes down. It
didn't change things. It wasn't a big deal." After all, a pretty girl gets
more than one kiss, right? But for the record, Edith describes the
situation. "It was a good kiss, it went on for a long time," she recalls.
"I closed my eyes, I didn't resist. I think, sometimes, if I hadn't been
with my girlfriend, I might have stayed."
Greta Friedman is
understanding. "There's no doubt that Mrs. Shain was there and got
kissed," she grants, "because every female was grabbed and kissed by men
in uniform." But, says Greta, 56, of Frederick, Md., "it definitely is my
shape. I used a comb in my hair. I had a purse like the one in the nurse's
hand. i remember being kissed by a sailor, right on Broadway."
Just before it happened,
Barbara Sokol recalls, she got "an ucky, sloppy kiss"
and was wiping her mouth with a handkerchief when up walked this gob who
yelled, "'Gotcha' I said, 'No! No! No!' and when he bent me back I
thought, 'My God, I'm gonna fall'" Barbara, 56, a nurse in Derby, Conn.,
has kept the pictured moment preserved in a frame, "my one claim to fame
|
|
