Some woke Veterans Affairs officials banned the famed 1945 Times Square kissing photo from agency buildings last month — prompting their apparently fuming boss to publicly reverse the edict Tuesday.
“Let me be clear: This image is not banned from VA facilities — and we will keep it in VA facilities,” Veteran Affairs Secretary Denis McDonough wrote on X — an hour and a half after a copy of the memo that banned the supposedly politically incorrect Alfred Eisenstaedt photo surfaced.
The VA chief had not been made aware of the memo before it was issued and never approved it, sources familiar with the matter added to The Associated Press.
The iconic snap was taken by Eisenstaedt on Aug. 14, 1945 — the day the Japanese announced they were surrendering during World War II — and captured a sailor kissing a woman in a nurse’s uniform in the center of Manhattan, becoming a instant symbol of the jubilation that Americans felt with the war was finally over.
But it garnered controversy in recent years, particularly with the #MeToo movement, because the woman in the photograph, a dental assistant named Greta Zimmer Friedman, had never met the sailor, George Mendonsa, before she suddenly found herself lip-locked with him at the Crossroads of the World.
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