V-J Day in Times Square

V-J Day in Times Square


     I remember seeing this photo when I was younger. It was taken by Alfred Eisenstaedt on August 14, 1945, after it was announced that Japan had surrendered, and the war was over. It was published in the August 27, 1945, issue of LIFE magazine. Even though I was born almost thirty years after World War II ended, there was something about a nation being so jubilant that a sailor would kiss the first girl he came across. If the pair featured in this photograph knew anything, it was that the war was over, and that the men who had been fighting would be coming home.