Sailor in iconic V-J Day kiss photo dies at age 95
PROVIDENCE, R.I. — The sailor shown kissing a woman in Times Square celebrating the end of the Second World War died Sunday. George Mendonsa was 95.
Mendonsa fell and had a seizure at the assisted living facility in Middletown, R.I., where he lived with his wife of 70 years, his daughter, Sharon Molleur, told The Providence Journal.
Mendonsa was shown kissing Greta Zimmer Friedman, a dental assistant in a nurse’s uniform, on Aug. 14, 1945. Known as V-J Day, it was the day Japan surrendered to the United States. People spilled into the New York City streets to celebrate the news.
Mendonsa kissed Friedman, whom he had never met.
The photo by Alfred Eisenstaedt was first published in Life magazine and is called “V-J Day in Times Square,” but is known to most as “The Kiss.” It became one of the most famous photographs of the 20th century.
Mendonsa served on a destroyer and was on leave when the end of the war was announced.
When he was honoured at the Rhode Island State House in 2015, Mendonsa spoke about the kiss. He said Friedman reminded him of nurses on a hospital ship that he saw care for wounded sailors.
“I saw what those nurses did that day and now back in Times Square the war ends, a few drinks, so I grabbed the nurse,” he said, according to WPRI-TV.
Friedman said in a 2005 interview with the Veterans History Project that it wasn’t her choice to be kissed.
“The guy just came over and kissed or grabbed,” she told the Library of Congress.
Friedman fled Austria during the war as a 15-year-old girl. She died in 2016 at the age of 92.