In the thick of Times Square, on the day Japan surrendered, a sailor kissed a young woman, leaning into her so that her back gracefully arched and her right knee bent. The photograph of this, which is so widely known and liked, seems to capture his lust for life. She seems to be holding on for dear life.
Alfred Eisenstaedt’s immortal image, “V-J Day, 1945, Times Square,” snapped on Aug. 14, 1945, made its first appearance in the Aug. 27 issue of Life magazine. The accompanying caption omitted names: “In the middle of New York’s Times Square a white-clad girl clutches her purse and skirt as an uninhibited sailor plants his lips squarely on hers.” The young woman appeared to be wearing a nurse’s uniform, but she was not identified by that profession or any other.
It is no wonder that the sailor and the woman wanted to be identified. Over the decades, pretenders emerged, but recent research, including that presented in Lawrence Verria and George Galdorisi’s 2012 book, The Kissing Sailor: The Mystery Behind the Photo That Ended World War II, resulted in something close to a definitive ruling. That supposed nurse? She was a dental assistant, Greta Zimmer Friedman. And the sailor? George Mendonsa, a Newport, R.I., native, who while in the Navy saw action in the Pacific. He died Sunday at the age of 95.
Ironically, Mendonsa assumed Friedman was a nurse when, on a whim, he pulled her aside for the kiss. In a 2005 interview for the Library of Congress’ Veterans History Project, he remembered having observed and admired the ceaseless devotion of nurses while overseas. “And I believe from that day on I had a soft spot for nurses, and when I saw that nurse in Times Square many months later, that it was the uniform that did it,” he said. “I believe if that girl did not have a nurse’s uniform on, that I never would have grabbed her.”
Identifications have been made, but questions persist. For starters, why does “V-J Day in Times Square” retain such a hold on our imagination? It was not necessarily destined for immortality. The picture did not even earn a spot on the cover of the magazine.
What’s more, Eisenstaedt’s photograph was presented as part of a feature illustrating the many ways in which the country celebrated the Allies’ victory. On the basis of the images chosen for inclusion, rash, mildly reckless behavior was the rule, rather than the exception, as the country exhaled. A horde of cheering, waving supporters of President Harry S. Truman formed outside the White House, while onlookers egged on a sailor as he retrieved a bottle from a vandalized liquor shop in San Francisco. After all, what’s a little thievery when you just saved Western civilization?
“V-J Day, 1945, Times Square” is at once more startling, and more innocent, than the pictures that surround it. Attesting to the audacity of the kiss, behind Mendonsa and Friedman, and just slightly out-of-focus, are a squinting sailor and a matronly old lady, who look at the duo with expressions somewhere between shock and admiring approbation. The dash and verve of the action, the way the figures, far from posing, are captured in a graceful midlean, reflects the boldness of spirit that took the nation to victory in war. Friedman was also interviewed for the Veterans History Project and said she took the kiss as an expression of relief, not romance. “It wasn’t that much of a kiss,” she said. “It was more of a jubilant act that he didn’t have to go back.”
It is good that Mendonsa and Friedman got the credit, but it is worth asking whether our appreciation of the photograph — their photograph — has deepened as a result. Post-kiss, Mendonsa and Friedman went on with their own lives, but in their book, Verria and Galdorisi admit the fun of imagining what would have happened to them in the absence of identification. “Prosperity, security, and confidence await the entwined couple,” they write. “There will be marriages and a baby boom, creating a common experience that continues to characterize America’s preferred vision of itself.” He did not know it at the time, but in his heedless kiss, Mendonsa was casting himself in an image as distinctively American and, in some ways, as lastingly anonymous as the bald eagle or Uncle Sam.
Peter Tonguette writes for many publications, including the Wall Street Journal, National Review, and Humanities.
