B This photograph was taken on August 14, 1945, the day the Allied Forces ( 盟军;联军 ) announced victory over Japan and World War II ended in the US. P eople were very emotional and streamed into Times Square, hugging and kissing each other. T oday, over sixty years later, the photograph of the passionate kiss by a sailor on the lips of a surprised, white-uniformed nurse in Times Square has become the image of that day. “ It was a very long kiss, ” recalls Edith Cullen Shain, the nurse in the historic photograph. “ It was like a dance step — the way he took me in his arms. ” Shain said she closed her eyes and never looked at the sailor. “ I let him kiss me because he had been in a war and fought for me, ” she said. Shain is now a great-grandmother living in California. A s everyone was celebrating, photographers were taking lots of pictures. T his one was printed in a magazine a week later, but 27-year-old Shain was “ too embarrassed ” to come forward and admit she had been the nurse in the picture. I t wasn ’ t until thirty-four years later, after she had moved to California, married, had children, and changed her job from nursing to teaching that she admitted it. L ife magazine photographer, Alfred Eisenstadt, who took the picture, flew to California to meet her, asked her questions and made sure that she was indeed the nurse in the picture. U nfortunately she and the sailor never spoke at the time of the kiss, so who the man is remains unknown, even though over 20 men have come forward to say they believe they were the one. “ There were so many people kissing,” she said, “I think they all believe they are right. ” I n 2005, a life-size colour-pained statue, by Seward Johnson, of the famous photograph was shown to the public in New York City ’ s Times Square. “ It ’ s amazing, ” said Shain after seeing the sculpture. “I think it means love, romance, peace and hope. ” A nd now, on the anniversary of that historic occasion, Times Square honours the US armed forces and the universal goals of peace, love and hope. T here on August 15, hundreds of couples of all nationalities, colours, ages, and religions celebrate by kissing in the very spot where Shain was kissed by the sailor, recalling the joy of the end of war and the hope for a peaceful future.