#596 The Sailor in the Picture- Eileen Dreyer
It’s one of the most famous pictures ever take. A sailor kissing a nurse he just met in times square on the day Japan surrenders, marking the end of WWII. Alfred Eisenstaedt was following the sailor as he jubilantly made his way through the crowd kissing any woman he could. What about the other woman, the other pictures? A picture if the sailor kissing Peg hangs in her living room. It happened just before the famous kiss and wasn’t captured as elegantly, but it was the most important day of her life.
Her husband, Jimmy was about to get home. She got the telegram a week earlier and was getting prepared to have a husband again. She had survived by herself, a single mother with twins, working at a butcher shop. She was the fastest woman with a knife. Now everyone was congratulating her because she could now go back to being “just a wife and a mother.”
There was something ominous about Jimmy’s return, something more than Peg losing her job and her independence. We see what it is after Jimmy witnesses the sailor kissing his wife in Time’s Square. Good thing she learned how to use the knife.
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