That Iconic WWII Photo...in Today's World

Parent Cafe
21

The Last Stand of the Tin Can Sailors by James Hornfischer is perhaps slightly more relevant, since George Mendonsa was a sailor on a destroyer (Eugene Sledge was a Marine on a bloody island battle). But his ship apparently somehow managed to avoid combat damage, unlike those in the book which took on a fleet of Japanese battleships and cruisers.

But, in any case, heroic contributions do not excuse deplorable behavior. One can recognize someone for heroic contributions while also criticizing him/her for deplorable behavior.

22

@hebegebe how do you know that this particular sailor went through anything like may be described in your book? How do you know that he wasn’t a file clerk in some office in New York who never left the States? Yes, even in that situation his work was valuable to the war effort, but remember that this occurred in Times Square. You don’t know anything more about the sailor and his service than we do.

Now, I do understand how he could lose control of himself in the extreme emotion of the situation. But since when is that a free pass? Saying that the emotion (and the alcohol) excuses the assault is no different than many of the rape/assault stories we still see today. Now, would I have recommended that the young lady press charges? No, because there was no real or lasting harm. But it was an assault.

23

@hebegebe - Sledge wrote “We were unable to understand their attitudes until until we ourselves returned homes and tried to comprehend people who griped because America wasn’t perfect, or their coffee wasn’t hot enough, or they had to stand in line and wait for a train or bus."

As for the sailor, he did serve in combat in the Pacific.

24

It is funny, I always assumed that both of them were caught up in the moment and it happened, I didn’t realize that she wasn’t happy about it.

I kind of get hebegebe’s point, that after the hell those guys went through (I don’t know about the guy in the picture, for all I know he just got into the Navy) that they would want to celebrate life (and I know that from a personal level, my dad went through that hell in Europe). I can tell you that when they went through France, they did get to kiss some young women, but it was a mutual celebration from what I can tell. On the other hand, the guy may have been caught up in the moment and his intentions were good, but that doesn’t mean you get the right to take advantage, either. Something like a kiss (to me) isn’t that big a deal, but perhaps to the woman in question it was, like I said, I assumed that she was a willing partner in it, never realized she had issues with it, that somehow something happened before the photo that made it consensual. On the scale of harm to someone, an unwanted kiss may not be quite as big a deal, but it still was unwanted and everyone is different. One way to frame this I suppose, especially to someone who says “what is the big deal about a kiss”, suppose the sailor went up to the nearest guy and gave him a kiss like that, would they feel like it was no big deal, warranted, etc? Or would they see themselves in the position of the guy who was kissed (given most men’s issues with being seen as gay, etc, especially in that generation) and say “what the F gave that guy the right to do that?”.

25

Or the civilians might even had to “ration food.” Oh, those poor dears.

26

There were several Vietnam Vets in my old NYC neighborhood who tried using the war to elicit sympathy when they were arrested and prosecuted for burglarizing homes or mugging passersby or behaving badly by catcalling young women.

No one…especially not the LEOs gave them a pass. Especially considering many LEOs and older neighbors at the time were veterans from Vietnam and prior wars. Including the father and uncle of an elementary school classmate who served in Korea and/or Vietnam, did stints as drill sergeants at Parris Island, and retired as Marine NCOs after putting in 20+ years. Most of those veterans would have felt highly insulted at the idea that their veteran status or wartime contributions should give them a pass on bad behavior…and said as much to the fellow veterans who were caught out committing their crimes or behaving badly.

27

A more accurate question (given that these two people were of the opposite sex) would be “Suppose a straight female sailor walked up to a straight male civilian and kissed him, would the guy feel like it was no big deal?” I think we all know the answer to that. :slight_smile:

Honestly, I can’t believe how uptight we have become as a society over the years. It’s sad when we are looking at picture that was taken 70+ years ago, during one of the most important times in our country’s history, and critiquing it on the basis of sexual assault… smh

28

The article posted states it was aug 14, 1945 and the sailor and his date were in the movie theatre. There was pounding on the doors and everyone went outside to the news that the war was over and the Japanese had surrendered. He and his date went to a bar and celebrated with some drinks. He was drunk. Back out on the street the mood was still jubilant and as they crossed the street he saw the women dressed as a nurse and ran to her grabbed her and kissed her. He doesn’t even remember it. He was thinking she had been part of the war effort, that she also witnessed horrible things while serving the war.

That’s the context. I say he gets a pass in my book. I can’t imagine the pure joy and happiness of those few hours after victory was declared.

It was a different time. The country was getting ready to invade Japan.It was a moment in time none of us has ever experienced in our lives. I think you would have had to be there before you could pass judgement.

29

I really want to not be able to believe this thread, but alas I’m aware that attitudes haven’t changed all that much in the many decades between then and now.

So he was happy and he gets a pass. Where is the line drawn? Coming home from war? What if he was not in a battle zone and instead deployed to a non-combat zone or in a non-combat role? Did he have to have multiple deployments?

What about other happy moments? Winning the Super Bowl? Winning a state championship? Surviving a natural disaster?

Where do we draw the line on what is acceptable physical contact? Or do we give men increasing passes based on how “happy” the moment is?

And yes, it was a different time and what he did at the time wasn’t illegal. That doesn’t mean that we can’t retroactively recognize it for what it was. We do that with all sorts of things- genocide, human rights abuses, rape, spousal abuse, and so on.

30

It was THE end of World War Two. The very day it was declared over. Just hours after they heard. Please, please get the context. Daily reports of husbands, wives, brothers, sisters , friends that were missing in action or declared dead. Think of it. Pearl Harbor. The fear, the sacrifice, the unknowns.

And then, suddenly, out of nowhere the end was declared.

You have got to understand the difference.

Or maybe we can all be so very lucky as to never understand what our country was going through at that time…

31

Yes, social norms and legal situations have changed since the 1940s.

However, that does not mean that people today cannot look at such social norms and legal situations with a critical eye and say “isn’t it nice that … is no longer socially acceptable” or “let’s make sure that we never have to go back to when … was socially acceptable”?

32

“how do you know that this particular sailor went through anything like may be described in your book? How do you know that he wasn’t a file clerk in some office in New York who never left the States? Yes, even in that situation his work was valuable to the war effort, but remember that this occurred in Times Square. You don’t know anything more about the sailor and his service than we do.”

Well, actually we do. Did you not read the article? It very clearly states what the young man had gone through.

33

I remember once being in a mass celebration once and being given hugs by unknown members of the opposite sex. I rather liked it.

34

I’m sorry Roman, but if you think winning the super bowl is in any way equivalent to winning World War 2, then you have completely lost your mind.

The point is there doesn’t have to be a line for everything in life. You pick your battles. Somethings you just let go of, if the situation calls for it.

35

It was a stupid drunk move that wouldn’t fly today, done in a moment of high excitement that we can’t fathom. Move on. We need to stop escalating every situation to the highest level of offense and equating this with true sexual assault.

36

Again I understand what people are trying to say, VJ day was something many of us probably can’t comprehend, the relief that the war was over and no one else was going to die or be burned up or crippled or whatnot. They were predicting a million casualties if they had to invade Japan, they were getting ready to ship people from Europe to the Asian theater, and people were weary (not to mention, that they also had gone through 10 years before that of the great depression). It adds up to a lot. It explains the why the guy did it, and yes, it also reflects a different world then ours, it is kind of ironic that in our eyes, that was sexual assault, when many people look back to that era as a time when we didn’t have all the rampant sexuality and there were traditional values, etc (which my father would snort if he heard someone say that). Was what the guy did in our eyes a form of sexual harassment or assault? In the sense that it wasn’t consensual, yes, if he had done that with his date it might have been fine, but kissing is a form of intimacy (as opposed to hugging someone, which a lot of people did). If the woman was troubled by that, then at the very least it was inappropriate, a violation of her privacy and space, I don’t know legally if that would pass the test of sexual assault (maybe a lawyer could weigh in on that).

“Sledge wrote “We were unable to understand their attitudes until until we ourselves returned homes and tried to comprehend people who griped because America wasn’t perfect, or their coffee wasn’t hot enough, or they had to stand in line and wait for a train or bus.”

I wonder if he considered griping the complaints of blacks, who served in a segregated military, were often given some of the crappiest jobs out there, were not allowed in other cases to serve in combat, and then had to come home to a country, after defeating the racist, fascist Nazi Germany , that had Jim Crow and other forms of institutionalized racism and also looked the other way with lynching, refusing to act…that wasn’t America not being perfect, that was America directly acting in many ways like the foe we vanquished, if not quite to the level of the Nazis and it wasn’t whining.

Yes, I realize he was talking about wartime shortages, rationed food, overtaxed railroads, that in comparison to what those who fought went through and saw was minor. On the other hand, he also is writing with a bit of rose colored lessons, almost everyone who fought in the second world war I knew, my dad and others, talked a lot about the griping they used to do all the time, about all the bureaucratic snafus, supply that was sending bug spray and insect repellent to guys serving during the bulge when it was freezing, crappy food, and that the griping helped pass the time, my dad always chuckled at those who put out this image of the heroic, stolid soldier fighting through hell and never complaining, and said they were kind of like Winston Churchill’s exploits during the Boer war (as told by George Bernard Shaw), they were there, they fought, that is true, the rest on the other hand was them. Ever see some of the comics Bill Mauldin put out (which old blood and guts tried to get him court martialled for), the Willy and Joe comics? They were more real then what that guy wrote.

37

Don’t assume some of us don’t know the depth of sacrifice or the gigantic scale of the conflict.

Especially considering from the perspective of many other nations, while the US contributed substantially to the victory…it entered the war years after several other nations had already been deeply embroiled in the fighting.

In the case of my family’s country of origin, 1941 marked the 4th year of it being heavily embroiled in an all-out war with the Imperial Japanese invaders. That included one older uncle who had risen to senior field command and another who was a teen risking his life along with other teens going behind Japanese lines to scrawl anti-Japanese graffiti and commit acts of sabotage to undermine the Imperial Japanese war machine.

The case of my oldest uncle is an interesting one regarding this thread’s theme of whether wartime veterans should be given a pass for bad behaviors due to their wartime service.

He was the one whom my grandfather disowned back in the '20s for being expelled by his college for hijinks which would be quite tame or even considered ok by today’s undergrads and their parents. My grandfather** never forgave nor reconciled** with said uncle even after he successfully graduated from Whampoa Military Academy, rose to senior field command, and died in action fighting the Japanese toward the end of the war.

  • Grandfather was also active in working on behalf of the Allied War effort during the same period.

** Didn’t help my uncle wasn’t good at concealing his true feelings when he felt authority figures were wrong from adolescence onward. This followed him into the service vis a vis his senior CO and more senior brass which nearly got him dismissed from the service when he was a company commander in 1937. That is until the Japanese started their all-out invasion not too long afterwards and the Nationalists needed every qualified trained commissioned officer and NCO they had.