The Quiet Photograph

Quick answer: How did U.S. troops in the Pacific react to Japan's surrender in 1945?

While crowds celebrated in Times Square after Truman's 7 p.m. announcement on August 14, 1945, many men in the Pacific sat on steel decks and cots with helmets off and heads down. John contrasts those quiet photographs with Eisenstaedt's famous kiss, and ends at Pearl Harbor, where USS Arizona still leaks oil.

You've seen the photograph: a sailor in dark blues kissing a woman in white in Times Square, the crowd a blur of hats behind them. It ran in Life a week later and has stood for the end of the Second World War ever since. At seven in the evening on August 14, 1945, President Truman announced Japan's surrender and declared a two-day holiday, and half a million people in Times Square screamed at once. That picture is honest about how people at home felt. But there are other photographs from that day that didn't run in Life. Men sit on steel decks and the edges of cots with their helmets off and heads down, not celebrating anything. John writes about what the end of a war looks like to those still standing in it. He closes at Pearl Harbor, where the Missouri and the Arizona lie four hundred yards apart, and where the Arizona still releases a few quarts of oil a day. The caretakers call them the black tears.

Why it matters for leaders: Victory looks different to those who paid for it; good leaders make room for the quiet as well as the celebration.

Q: What are the black tears of the USS Arizona?

A: Fuel oil that still rises from the sunken Arizona, seven or eight quarts a day, forming a thin film on Pearl Harbor's surface.

Q: Where are the Missouri and Arizona today?

A: Both lie in Pearl Harbor about four hundred yards apart, the Missouri's bow turned toward the Arizona: the last page of the war facing the first.

Read the full essay on Substack → https://heroespath.substack.com/p/the-quiet-photograph

By John Fenzel, founder and CEO of Heroes' Path Foundation