• About
  • Who’s Who
  • Contributors

The Write Side of 59

~ This is What Happens When You Begin to Age Out of Middle Age

The Write Side of 59

Tag Archives: Vietnam war

Sarasota Statue a Throwback to When War was Glamorized

05 Thursday Dec 2013

Posted by WS50 in Concepts, Men

≈ 1 Comment

Tags

Concepts, Florida, Men, Sarasota, Unconditional Surrender, Vietnam war, World War II

Bob statue

“Unconditional Surrender,” statue in Sarasota, Florida. Photo by Bob Smith.

BY BOB SMITH

Alongside the road by the bayfront in Sarasota, Florida, is a 25-foot-tall statue of a 1940’s-era U.S. Navy sailor kissing a woman in a nurse’s uniform. She’s bent backward with her eyes closed, and one arm dangling at her side in blissful submission to his embrace.

The statue, entitled “Unconditional Surrender,” is a copy of a lesser-known version of an iconic photograph taken by Alfred Eisenstadt.
The date was August 14, 1945, and the U.S. media had just announced that Japan would agree to surrender, thereby ending four long years of war. Japan’s surrender was particularly significant because the Japanese had fought so tenaciously, and had sworn to fight to the last inch of soil if their country was invaded.

Like today’s suicide bombers, Japanese kamikaze pilots found glory in sacrificing their lives to kill Americans. Moreover, Japan had prompted the United States to enter the war by attacking Pearl Harbor, the 9/11 event of our parents’ generation.
Japan’s surrender was likely prompted by our destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on August 6 and August 9 , just a few days earlier. In the world’s first and (to date) only wartime use of atomic weapons, the United States had wiped out two entire cities and killed between 75,000 and 125,000 people, virtually in the blink of an eye. More than twice that number would die from the effects of the bombs over the coming months and years.

But on August 14, people in America weren’t wringing their hands over whether or not our use of the atomic bomb had been justified. This was a day when unbridled joy broke out across the land, and drunken revelers spontaneously poured into the streets of New York and other cities. It was in the midst of this happy mayhem that an anonymous sailor grabbed a dental assistant he’d never met and planted a kiss on her startled lips.

Unconditional Surrender has been derided by many as a kitschy and derivative – journalistic – hardly qualifying as art. However, one World War II veteran with a strong sense of nostalgia, and the bankroll to back it up, felt it worthwhile to pay around half a million dollars to have the statue displayed in Sarasota. So there it stands (at least for a couple more years).

What strikes me about the photo, and the sculpture, is not that they capture a moment that has any direct emotional significance to me; they don’t. What I find interesting is that there never was a similar galvanizing moment in our lives at the end of a war – because the war of our youth, Vietnam, divided the country, rather than united it.

There were gung-ho types who went off to that war in the blind faith that it was their duty to do whatever our leaders had decided was right. There were the hippies and others in the peace movement who demonstrated against the war, and ran off to Canada, or invented exotic ailments to exempt them from the draft. Any young man who was undecided, but nonetheless fit and unwilling to buck the system, was subject to being drafted, and sent off to fight an obscure, unpopular war.

I was fortunate, because by the time I turned 18, the war was winding down and they never called people with my draft card number. But even though I didn’t go, the media images in my mind from Vietnam are far from glorious. There was the wrenching photo of a naked young girl running down the street among a crowd of terrified Vietnamese citizens, fleeing the napalm bombing of her village.

There was the horrific image of a South Vietnamese general at the moment he was executing a prisoner, where you could actually see the pressure and wind rush from the gunshot distorting the doomed man’s face. And finally, there were the photos of Americans lining up to be evacuated from Saigon by a helicopter waiting on a rooftop.

Maybe it’s good that our generation doesn’t have any romanticized images to associate with our “big war.” Thanks to the Internet and smartphones, and the resultant near-instantaneous global communication of words and images, that kind of photo is unlikely to ever be so dominant again. Even an event as happy, and apparently as innocent, as the kiss reflected in Unconditional Surrender would quickly lose its impact in the real-time, You-Tube’d, instant-messaged context of all the horrors that had come before it.

Share this:

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Reddit
  • Email

Like this:

Like Loading...

Fortunate Son Number 234

04 Tuesday Dec 2012

Posted by Lois DeSocio in Men, Opinion

≈ 2 Comments

Tags

Draft Cards, Frank Terranella, Men, opinion, Selective Service, The Write Side of 50, Vietnam war

draft card

My son most likely will never receive a draft card – is that a good thing?

BY FRANK TERRANELLA

I was looking for something in a drawer in my bedroom recently, and came across a relic from the 1970s – my draft card.  It occurs to me that the Baby Boomer generation is in a unique position when it comes to military service. While we were the last generation of men in recent times who were saddled with compulsory military service, most of us didn’t serve.  So we are unlike our fathers, who mostly did serve, and unlike our sons, who may never have experienced the threat of compulsory service.

I think that every man my age remembers going down to the Draft Board and registering.  Those of us who were more fortunate were able to claim college or other exemptions.  The less fortunate got their induction letters, and were sent to war.

Continue reading →

Share this:

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Reddit
  • Email

Like this:

Like Loading...

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 294 other followers

Twitter Updates

  • @lisamurkowski PLEASE PLEASE commit to NOT voting for her on the Senate floor. 3 years ago
  • Diane Feinstein "How could we possibly conclude that [Sessions] will be independent?” nyti.ms/2jReX6q 3 years ago
  • Check out these beautiful earring trees at etsy.com/shop/TheNestin… https://t.co/QZMGsBu4MU 5 years ago
  • It's the little things that keep the wrecking ball at bay. thewritesideof50.com/2014/11/17/the… 6 years ago
  • Nothing like a soulful pair of eyes. Check out thewritesideof50.com 6 years ago

Recent Posts

  • The Saturday Blog: Rooftops India
  • The Saturday Blog: The Heavy Duty Door
  • Marisa Merz at the Met Breuer
  • The Sunday Blog: Center Stage
  • The Saturday Blog: Courtyard, Pondicherry, India.

Archives

  • April 2017
  • March 2017
  • January 2017
  • December 2016
  • November 2016
  • October 2016
  • September 2016
  • August 2016
  • July 2016
  • June 2016
  • May 2016
  • April 2016
  • March 2016
  • February 2016
  • January 2016
  • December 2015
  • November 2015
  • October 2015
  • September 2015
  • August 2015
  • July 2015
  • June 2015
  • February 2015
  • January 2015
  • December 2014
  • November 2014
  • October 2014
  • September 2014
  • August 2014
  • July 2014
  • June 2014
  • May 2014
  • April 2014
  • March 2014
  • February 2014
  • January 2014
  • December 2013
  • November 2013
  • October 2013
  • September 2013
  • August 2013
  • July 2013
  • June 2013
  • May 2013
  • April 2013
  • March 2013
  • February 2013
  • January 2013
  • December 2012
  • November 2012

Categories

  • Art
  • Concepts
  • Confessional
  • Earrings; Sale
  • Entertainment
  • Film Noir
  • Food
  • Memoriam
  • Men
  • Movies
  • News
  • Opinion
  • Photography
  • politics
  • September 11
  • Travel
  • Words

Meta

  • Register
  • Log in
  • Entries feed
  • Comments feed
  • WordPress.com

The Write Side of 50

The Write Side of 50

Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email.

Join 294 other followers

Blog at WordPress.com.

Cancel
loading Cancel
Post was not sent - check your email addresses!
Email check failed, please try again
Sorry, your blog cannot share posts by email.
%d bloggers like this: