Victor Jorgensen/U.S. NavyVictor Jorgensen’s photograph, right, with the woman believed to be Gloria Bullard circled. At lower left, Mrs. Bullard in 1945, during her years at nursing school.It is a defining image of the American century, one that expressed the joy of a nation at its moment of greatest triumph: on the day the Japanese surrender was announced, a sailor grabbed a nurse in the middle of Times Square, bent her back and kissed her.
That kiss on V-J Day was captured in at least two photographs — one iconic, one merely famous. And for decades since, there have been debates: who was the sailor? Who was the nurse? A handful of people have staked claims, and countless stories have attempted to sort them out.
This is not one of those stories.
This is the story of another nurse. Her face appears, small but beaming nonetheless, way off to the side in the less famous of the two photos, nearly out of the frame, perched beneath the W of a Walgreen’s Drugs sign, watching the kissers, transfixed. The woman, Gloria Bullard — vivacious and lucid at 84 and living in South Carolina – still treasures her tiny spot in history: not so much 15 minutes of fame as a few millimeters of it.
Alfred Eisenstaedt/Time & Life Pictures, via Getty Images The iconic photo taken on V-J Day in 1945.Mrs. Bullard’s account not only provides a window into that remarkable moment whose 65th anniversary falls on Saturday. If it is correct, it could alter some long-held cultural assumptions about both the classic photograph by the Life magazine legend Alfred Eisenstaedt and the more meat-and-potatoes shot by Victor Jorgensen, a respected Navy photographer, in which Mrs. Bullard appears.
For decades, the world has believed that the photographs were taken after — perhaps just seconds after — President Truman’s announcement at 7:03 p.m. But in Mrs. Bullard’s recollection, the kiss occurred hours earlier — before the war was officially over. That amorous sailor, quite possibly, had jumped the gun.
Here is what she told us.
Gloria Delaney, as she was then known, was a 19-year-old nursing student in 1945 at New York Medical College, then at 105th Street and Fifth Avenue. Like most of her classmates, she also worked full time at the college’s hospital, filling in for registered nurses enlisted in the war effort.
On Aug. 14, a nation hoping for Japan’s surrender after the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki on Aug. 6 and 9 was expecting word at any moment. The streets were filled with people, milling, anticipating, already celebrating. Miss Delaney’s excitement was not just patriotic but also personal -– the end of World War II would bring the man she would eventually marry home from the Philippines.
Miss Delaney and her friend Margery Keech were excused a little early from their 7 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. shift and headed downtown to join the throngs before catching the train home to New Canaan, Conn. They had the next day off.
They were still wearing their uniforms. “That was a no-no, but who cares that day,” Mrs. Bullard said. “We didn’t want to lose any time at all.”
The bus down Fifth Avenue crawled through a sea of humanity. The two friends got off in Midtown and tried to make their way east to Grand Central but could not get through the crowds.
“We decided to walk over to Eighth Avenue to take the bus home,” Mrs. Bullard said. “That’s when we got caught in Times Square.”
The crowded air was thick and loud. “It was so exciting,” Mrs. Bullard recalled. “Horns, church bells, all kinds of noises.” The young women’s white uniforms attracted the affections of the servicemen, who were everywhere in the street.
“My uniform had half-sleeves with cuff links, and by the end my cuffs were hanging off and I’d lost the cuff links, and my sleeves were torn from all the hugging and kissing,” Mrs. Bullard said. “I got kissed at least a dozen times. Because we had a long ways to walk. We were a mess.”
Anne McQuary for The New York Times Gloria Bullard at 84. She said she was on the street when Eisenstaedt’s famous photo was taken.At the bowtie just south of 45th Street where Seventh Avenue and Broadway meet, Miss Delaney’s eye happened to light on a gap in the crowd, where a sailor had seized a nurse. “I just saw him grabbing her and then bending over and he kissed her.” The kiss went on. “I said, ‘Marge, Marge, come here, look at this.’ But she had already gone ahead. I just stopped and looked.”
The clinch continued. “She wasn’t really struggling,” Mrs. Bullard said. “It looked to me like she was trying to keep her skirt down. I got the impression she was enjoying it. Maybe that was because I was enjoying all the excitement, so I figured she was too.”
Miss Delaney did not notice either cameraman and did not know she was in the frame snapped by Jorgensen until years later, when her friend Margery sent her a copy of the photo. “She said, ‘How come I didn’t get to be in the picture?’ I told her, ‘You were too fast.’ ”
When Miss Delaney turned away from the spectacle to catch up with her friend, “They were still kissing.”
It took a good two hours by bus and train from Eighth Avenue to Stamford to New Canaan. As Miss Delaney walked home, the streets were empty and silent, but the churches were packed. She stopped into hers to pray. Then she walked on to her parents’ house.
Dusk was settling on New Canaan. “Streetlights were coming on as I was walking down Green Avenue to come home,” Mrs. Bullard said. “It was still light out.”
This is where Mrs. Bullard’s account suggests the shot was taken before the war was over, and that the kissing sailor jumped history by a few hours. For her to arrive home by dusk she would have had to leave Times Square long before 7 p.m.
Could she have witnessed a different kiss? There sure were a lot of sailors kissing a lot of nurses that day, after all.
“Well, I was right there,” she said. “I mean, you can see me right there in the photograph.” Photographs of herself she has provided from the same era certainly show a resemblance: round face, high cheek bones, bright, toothy smile and dark hair. The hair styles — known as “victory rolls” — and nurses’ hats are also similar, though also reflective of the style of the times. Mrs. Bullard’s friend, now living in Florida, did not return several calls.
Or could Life magazine, also caught up in the moment, have led the world astray about the Eisenstaedt photo?
“On Tuesday, Aug. 14, at 7 p.m., the President announced that the Japanese had accepted the Allied terms of surrender,” Life’s anonymous wordsmiths wrote in an essay accompanying the photograph and many others that ran under the headline “Victory Celebrations” on Aug. 27. “Americans who had been holding their collective breath” for days “let go with a tremendous whoosh on Tuesday night.”
The magazine continued: “From New York’s Times Square to San Francisco’s Market Street, people were bent on having a glorious holiday, and they did.” Among the evidence cited: “Servicemen kissed and were kissed.”
One person who could have added details to Mrs. Bullard’s version of events, Edith Shain, who long said she was the nurse being kissed, died early this summer.
Look again at the other people -– the extras, as it were — in both photos. Do they really look like they had just received word that their nation had won a great war? Don’t they seem a little more relaxed and casual than you’d expect?
Or maybe, who knows, the young nursing student was still in Times Square at 7:03 after all. Maybe she didn’t actually get home to New Canaan till well past dark.
“It very well could be that it was later,” Mrs. Bullard said. “Everything was bright and light to me.
“I’m the kind of person who when I’m happy everything is bright and light. And it was a beautiful, beautiful day.”
Anne McQuary for The New York Times Mrs. Bullard in her living room in Winnsboro, S.C., with her nurse’s cap.
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