Dear Editor:
Re: Wait For Me, Daddy statue sends the wrong message, Letters to the editor, The Record, Oct. 8. Once again, someone has taken history and put a revisionist (i.e. - a reconsideration of accepted truths) spin on it. I refer to Steve Vanden-Eykel's letter.
Some clarifications regarding Mr. Vanden-Eykel letter:
* The raising of the U.S. flag on Iwo Jima in February 1945 was not at the end of the Second World War (that came in August, Mr. Vanden-Eykel). Even if it was, this and the image of the sailor kissing the woman in Times Square you cite were both American images. Not Canadian.
* "I'd never heard of or seen the Wait For Me Daddy" photo, wrote Vanden-Eykel. Just because you never heard of this photo doesn't mean others haven't. I worked with a co-worker who remembers this photo as her mother is standing behind the mother reaching for her son.
* My research has uncovered that this Claude Dettloff's Oct. 1, 1940 photo, first published on Oct. 2, was pinned and taped to Canadian classroom walls across the country.
What really made this photo "iconic" is not about war. First, it was one of the few Canadian home front images widely disseminated in North America during the Second World War (1939-1945).
Second, like most conspiracy theories about "someone at the Province" dusting this off this photo to "polish up" the paper's image, needs no comment.
Third, if you did a little research, Mr. Vanden-Eykel, you'd find that numerous (most?) Canadian newspapers in fact published this photo in October 1940.
And fourth, the U.S.-based LIFE magazine published this photo nearly two weeks later on Oct. 21, 1940, as well as other magazines. It crystallized how the war affected families in both Canada and the U.S. In this case a Canadian family.
Images like this don't "celebrate" war's beginning (the war began a little over a year earlier in September 1939, by the way) as you put it. You are mixing up the word celebrate with honour and remembrance. Apparently, someone hasn't visited Pearl Harbor where the battle ship U.S.S. Arizona serves as a remembrance of the beginning of the U.S. entry in the Second World War, as well as a tomb for hundreds of U.S. sailors.
The statue is not about war, Mr. Vanden-Eykel. Rather how war affected the home front. In this case, the family of Jack and Bernice Bernard and their five-year-old son, Warren 'Whitey.' A one-in-a-million photographic moment.
Scott Larsen, New Westminster
