VA reverses plan to ban iconic WWII kiss photo from medical sites

[SouthBayDem]

Source: Military Times

Veterans Affairs Secretary Denis McDonough is overruling plans to ban the famous Times Square kiss photo marking the end of World War II from all department health care facilities, a move criticized as political correctness run amok.

The ban was announced internally at VA medical facilities late last month in a memo from RimaAnn Nelson, the Veterans Health Administration’s top operations official. Employees were instructed to “promptly” remove any depictions of the famous photo and replace it with imagery deemed more appropriate.

“The photograph, which depicts a non-consensual act, is inconsistent with the VA’s no-tolerance policy towards sexual harassment and assault,” the memo stated.

“To foster a more trauma-informed environment that promotes the psychological safety of our employees and the veterans we serve, photographs depicting the ‘V-J Day in Times Square’ should be removed from all Veterans Health Administration facilities.”

Read more: https://www.militarytimes.com/veterans/2024/03/05/va-reverses-plan-to-ban-iconic-wwii-kiss-photo-from-medical-sites/

[rockfordfile]

1. good. It was stupid to ban that

[Warpy]

2. I absolutely agree, it was a different time with different rules

and a day everybody was celebrating every way they could. The sailor was planting kisses on every woman he could catch and it wasn't assault, it was total jubilation. Here is her take on it:

"As the photo drew fame over the 20th century, rumors swirled over the identities of the kissers. Many people also view the photo as depicting sexual assault, and not something to be celebrated.

"Friedman was a 21-year-old dental assistant, out in Times Square when news of the war’s end broke. George Mendonsa, who in 2015 confirmed he was the man in the photo, saw Friedman for the first time, spun her around and kissed her.

“It wasn’t that much of a kiss,” Friedman, who came forward as the woman in the photo years later, said in a 2005 interview with the Veterans History Project. “It was just somebody celebrating. It wasn’t a romantic event.'' ”

Context is everything and while Friedman knew it wasn't an assault. So should we.

ETA: (put in the link, stupid. OK) https://time.com/4486812/wwii-kiss-photo-vj-day/

[Abolishinist]

17. You conveniently either left out or are not aware of "the rest of the story"

Zimmer, a Jewish refugee from Austria who lost her parents in the Holocaust, had gone to get the news off the ticker-tape sign at Broadway and Seventh Avenue during a work break. Probably Zimmer, like other women, knew of Times Square’s seedy reputation, which had grown during the war, when it became a beacon for soldiers and sailors on shore leave. Complaints about rowdy servicemen trickled steadily into Third Naval District headquarters. “Sailors call you the vilest names if you ask them to leave you alone,” one area resident complained. Zimmer later related that she had not felt comfortable going out that day in her bright white dental assistant uniform and was anxious to get back to her office.

“It wasn’t my choice to be kissed,” she told one interviewer. “The guy just came over and grabbed!” Another reporter asked what she was thinking at that moment. “I hope I can breathe,” she said in local news footage since removed from the Internet: “I mean somebody much bigger than you and much stronger, where you’ve lost control of yourself, I’m not sure that makes you happy.”

Zimmer was not alone that day. Indeed it took so long to identify the famous kissing couple because at least a dozen sailors confessed to grabbing women in Times Square during the celebrations. Photographs and moving images stored at the National Archives show other women being accosted, chased and kissed against their will. One man sat on the curb and pulled passersby into his lap. Other “exuberant soldiers and sailors” tore clothes from a woman’s body, The Washington Post reported, “and a policeman who attempted to intervene was knocked down.”

Do you defend the other attackers as well in those different times with different rules?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/outlook/2019/02/22/wwiis-most-iconic-kiss-wasnt-romantic-it-was-assault/

[chouchou]

32. Thank you so much for that knowledge.

All my life, I've heard "What's the big deal" "Oh..it was just a different time" "Nobody was unhappy about the kiss"

Frankly, I'd like to dig the dude up and slap his face! (Ok..I'm kinda kidding...kinda)

[SouthBayDem]

4. RimaAnn Nelson's VA bio mentions no medical training

only her jobs as regional VA director. What qualifies her to make statements about "trauma informed environments"? Where are her credentials in mental health or psychology?

Here's a 2016 news article reporting on problems from her time as St. Louis VA director. OK, it turns out Nelson worked as a nurse prior to the VA at St. Louis:

A VA Office of Inspector General report verified that 1,812 patients were potentially affected in 2010 by breaches in the cleaning and sterilization of medical equipment over a period of months at John A. Cochran VA Medical Center. They faced possible exposure to hepatitis and HIV infections.

In a written statement, the VA said Nelson took immediate remedial action after learning of possible infection exposures at the St. Louis hospital. The dental clinic was closed, a cleanup was completed and safeguards were created to avoid future problems. While 1,769 veterans faced potential exposure, the statement says, none became infected.

[50 Shades Of Blue]

3. Too bad.

[Polybius]

21. Why?

[50 Shades Of Blue]

22. I don't think it's OK to grab a random woman and kiss her without consent.

Sure, times were different then but we know better now. That's why Confederacy symbols are finally being removed.

[Polybius]

23. I don't believe it's ok either

But I also don't believe it canceling things out after 79 years. This goes for name changes on things that no one complained about even in the 80's or 90's.

[50 Shades Of Blue]

24. I don't consider it "canceling." It's evolving awareness of what inclusivity means.

But either way, I don't have a single problem with some things being canceled.

[Polybius]

25. I hear ya

It's probably just me, as I'm extremely nostalgic. Seeing things that I grew up with change names or pictures (syrup, butter, rice, sports team names, etc.) deeply depresses me.

[50 Shades Of Blue]

28. Oh, I hear you, too! It's an evolving process!

ETA And not always a comfortable one!

[The Grand Illuminist]

31. Could lead to dangerous and deadly consequences

the farther along it goes. The more this continues, the more likely people will go to war over these things.

[50 Shades Of Blue]

34. The war against slavery and for women's rights never ends.

[Oopsie Daisy]

5. Great to hear! (I also love the song "Baby It's Cold Outside!")

[EX500rider]

33. "I also love the song "Baby It's Cold Outside!"

In my head they live in Minneapolis during a blizzard in that song and he is trying to save her life!
"Baby It's Cold Outside!!!"

[PSPS]

6. Give me a break. Even the two people in the picture understood it was just an act of exuberance.

That was George Mendonsa and Greta Zimmer Friedman in the picture. They've both talked about it. Here's a snippet from a story nine years ago in AZ Central.

The woman in the photo, whose married name was Greta Zimmer Friedman, said the kiss wasn’t consensual. “It wasn't my choice to be kissed,” she said in a 2005 interview for the Library of Congress’ Veterans History Project. “The guy just came over and kissed or grabbed.”

In 2016, after her death at 92, her son, Joshua Friedman, told The New York Times that, while his mother understood the contention that it was an unwanted sexual advance, she did not view it that way. In the 2005 interview, Zimmer said, "It was just somebody really celebrating. But it wasn't a romantic event. It was just an event of 'thank God the war is over' kind of thing."

"It wasn't that much of a kiss, it was more of a jubilant act that he didn't have to go back," she said. "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."

Three months earlier, Mendonsa had been at the helm of the USS The Sullivans during the Battle of Okinawa and dragged survivors and the dead from the water. Nurses helped save many lives.

In an interview for the same project, Mendonsa said he’d grabbed Zimmer because he thought she was a war nurse. “It was all done in good clean honest fun,” he said.

So much time has passed since WW II that almost everyone who was involved is now gone. I think that's one reason we're seeing society going adrift. People who know first-hand where this kind of politics and social discourse can lead have left us to, sadly, discover it all over again. Russia's expansionist action is a harbinger of that.

[PatSeg]

9. Thanks for posting that

[lapfog_1]

15. My father served on a destroyer in WWII.

One time I got him to talk to me about his war time experience. He spent 20 hours one night and next day as part of a detail of sailors using pikes to fish bodies out of the water from a cruiser that had been next to his ship when it was hit by a torpedo. Dozens of dead bodies... very few live ones. Every so often, 20 or 30 years later, I would remember him waking up in the middle of the night screaming. I will never forget that sound.

This photo wasn't a guy trying to have sex in the middle of the street... he was just so damn happy he wasn't going back. In that time and in that place... this wasn't a sexual thing or a power thing... it was joy at not having to go back to the War. I think we can all forgive him... and it was almost 80 years ago.

[3825-87867]

7. The day trump loses the 2024 election

and.or the day he dies, the picture of the sailor for WWII will become a close second for viewing!
And the new picture of trump losing or dead will live on for many more years.

[PatSeg]

8. Oh for Pete's sake

That is just looking for problems don't exist. I'm quite sure no one in the past 70+ years took that photo as anything other than pure joy that the war was finally over. It is an iconic photo, expressing what millions of people felt around the world.

Seriously "political correctness run amok."

[Basic LA]

10. There's a giant statue of it in San Diego.

Wish I could link the image.

[SouthBayDem]

11. here's a picture

https://fox5sandiego.com/news/local-news/how-san-diegos-kissing-statue-became-a-fixture-on-the-downtown-waterfront/

[Basic LA]

12. There you go!

Thanks for that. A lot of good info, too, in the story!

[Bayard]

13. I like the title of it,

"Embracing Peace."

[PSPS]

14. Here you go

[prodigitalson]

16. and in related news

fascism - the defeat of which was cause for the celebration that led to the kiss has become a problem once more. may we deal with it the way the generation in the famous photo did.

[Rhiannon12866]

18. Good Grief! Apparently insanity is contageous!

[LisaM]

19. When my grandpa came home from WWII

he and my grandma re-enacted that kiss in their backyard.

I'm sure that scene was repeated thousands of times with returning GIs. It was just an expression of joy and relief, and the picture has been an inspiration for decades. It tells a story that goes far beyond the people in it.

[FakeNoose]

20. Really? I find it hard to call this "non-consensual"

To me (a woman) it looks like this woman consented to the kiss, but maybe she was caught by surprise.



Non-consensual looks quite different than this.

[All Mixed Up]

26. She definitely didn't consent.

She admitted as much in interviews. But she also saw it for what it was: a jubilant moment. I don't think she had any real issues with it.

There are bigger things we can get outraged over.

[AkFemDem]

27. As a veteran, a woman, and someone who has worked with many veterans...

I can’t believe it even got to the point this had to happen. With all of the issues at the VA, this was their best shot at addressing veterans trauma?? It was a ridiculous empty gesture that no veteran I know, male or female, loud mouthed republican or democrat, supported. When we get angry about people blowing off actual REAL important issues as “political correctness” and “woke agenda” and we express how frustrating it is that important issues that affect millions are swept aside with those dismissive comments- we might want to stop and ask ourselves if indulging in a culture war on petty, harmless stuff like old iconic war victory pictures has contributed to this environment.

[Joinfortmill]

29. As a woman who has experienced a thing

or two, this photo is NOT traumatic. Glad they came to their senses.

[walkingman]

30. There is plenty to fix at the VA - this is not one of them.