The White House intercepted and returned an attempt to censor the famous photo by Alfred Eisenstaedt in which an American sailor passionately kisses a nurse in the heart of Times Square to celebrate the end of the Second World War.
Last week a senior official from the Department of Veterans Affairs proposed removing the 'VJ Day in Times Square' image from the ministry's walls in light of the "non-consensual" nature of the embrace "in violation of internal rules of zero tolerance towards sexual harassment".
Some employees had complained, said the proposal's author, RimaAnn Nelson, an assistant undersecretary at the department.
An uproar had erupted that had caused protests across the political spectrum, reaching as far as the White House.
"We knew nothing about it," said spokeswoman Karine Jean-Pierre, adding that the photo was never banned.
"Let me be clear. We will keep the image displayed in our facilities," the Minister for Veterans Affairs, Denis McDonough, replied on X, attaching a reproduction of the famous shot to the tweet.
'VJ Day in Times Square' dates back to August 14, 1945, the day Japan surrendered.
The photo was published the following week in Life along with many others depicting celebrations across the United States.
It was a spontaneous event, Eisenstaedt later recalled: "I was walking in the crowd and I noticed a sailor coming in my direction. He tried to hug every woman in front of him and kiss them all, whether young or old."
In the excited euphoria of the moment the photographer had no time to get the names of his subjects.
The identity of the nurse, Greta Friedman, came back into the spotlight when she died in 2016. More doubt surrounded that of the sailor: one of the possible protagonists, Rhode Island fisherman George Mendonsa, died three years later.
And a few days ago, Carl Muscarello, the Italian-American convinced that he was the sailor immortalized in the photo, also passed away at the age of 97.
Carl was serving as a submarine mechanic when the announcement of the end of the war came: "They gave me leave and we went to Times Square. Someone bought us drinks. I must have had 12 beers that day and I started kissing all the women in front of me. Everyone kissed everyone," he told a group of students in 2010.
Reproduction reserved © Copyright ANSA