V-J Day in Times Square, a photograph by Alfred Eisenstadt was published in Life magazine in 1945 with the caption, “In New York’s Times Square a white-clad girl clutches her purse and skirt as an uninhibited sailor plants his lips squarely on hers.” (Used under fair use for non-profit educational purposes. Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images)
Alfred Eisenstadt’s photograph of a sailor and a nurse kissing in Times Square is an icon of V-J Day, August 14, 1945, the final end of World War II.
Despite the photo’s fame, the identities of the man and woman pictured have been a mystery. But a few clues uncovered in recent years have narrowed the pool of possible subjects to two people.
Rumors of the Japanese surrender passed by word-of-mouth across the country in the afternoon of August 14, a Tuesday. People poured out of their homes, shops, and offices and into the streets for the largest spontaneous celebration in American history. Times Square, the busiest pedestrian hub in the world, was the epicenter of the revelry. Over two million people gathered in the bowtie-shaped intersection of Broadway and Seventh Avenue at West 45th Street in Manhattan to await official confirmation of the news to blaze across the New York Times’ ticker.
Eisenstadt was just one of the photographers to capture the scene at Times Square that afternoon. Lieutenant Victor Jorgensen with the Naval Aviation Photographic Unit was also on hand. The two men converged on the same couple, a sailor and nurse, embraced in a kiss, and snapped photos from slightly different angles at the same time.
Navy journalist Victor Jorgensen, serving in the Naval Aviation Photographic Unit, took a photo of the same couple in Times Square at the same time as Alfred Eisenstadt, but from a different angle. This photo was published the next day in the New York Times: “New York City celebrating the surrender of Japan. They threw anything and kissed anybody in Times Square.” (National Archives)
Eisenstadt explained the shot:
I was walking through the crowds on V-J Day, looking for pictures. I noticed a sailor coming my way. He was grabbing every female he could find and kissing them all — young girls and old ladies alike. Then I noticed the nurse, standing in that enormous crowd. I focused on her, and just as I’d hoped, the sailor came along, grabbed the nurse, and bent down to kiss her. Now if this girl hadn’t been a nurse, if she’d been dressed in dark clothes, I wouldn’t have had a picture. The contrast between her white dress and the sailor’s dark uniform gives the photograph its extra impact.
Full length and framed by the complex intersection, Eisenstadt’s version of the scene, which was later published in Life, is the superior image. Jorgensen’s, however, is in the public domain and therefore is more frequently reproduced. The Navy lieutenant’s photo appeared in the New York Times in August 15.
Since that day, dozens of men have claimed to be the sailor, but only a handful of women stepped have forward as the nurse. According to the most authoritative study of the subject, Lawrence Verria and George Galdorisi’s The Kissing Sailor (2012), forensic analysis eliminates all but two claimants: George Mendonsa, a Navy quartermaster on leave from the Pacific and Greta Zimmer Friedman, a dental assistant (not a nurse) from Queens.
Mendonsa, who died in 2019 just shy of 96 years old, told the story this way. On the afternoon of August 14, he was on a date at the theater with a young woman named Rita. In the middle of the movie, the theater manager came on stage and announced the war was over. George and Rita fled the theater and hit the bars, before getting separated in the rolling crowd. George says he was overcome with gratitude when he saw a nurse in the street. He flashed back to his time on the USS The Sullivans (DD-537) when he witnessed a kamikaze attack on the USS Bunker Hill during the invasion of Okinawa. He watched from The Sullivans’ rail as a swarm of Navy nurses boarded the Bunker Hill to care for the wounded. On August 14, he saw a nurse in Times Square and kissed her as a way of saying thank you.
Navy QM George Mendonsa. (Courtesy of George Mendonsa)
Greta remembered it differently. “It wasn’t my choice to be kissed,” she said of the #MeToo moment. “The guy just came over and kissed or grabbed.”
Great’s dentist boss had closed up his office off Times Square as news of the Japanese surrender spread on the afternoon of August 14. Greta stepped into the swirling crowd and was kissed. George never knew she wasn’t a nurse.
1939 passport issued by the government of Austria for “Grete Sara Zimmer.” (Joshuamichaelfriedman, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia)
He also never knew her traumatic past. She was a Jewish immigrant from Vienna, having fled Nazi persecution in 1939, just before the outbreak of World War II. Her parents had stayed behind in Austria and would die in the Holocaust. She never saw the photos of herself in the New York Times or in Life magazine.
It was only decades later, in the 1960s, while leafing through a retrospective volume on the war when she saw Eisenstadt’s photo and exclaimed, “That’s me!”
History, however, has a way of never staying settled. Just when we thought the case of the Times Square Kiss was closed, three physicists at Texas State University began to raise new questions about the photograph. Actually, they sought to answer just one question that had never been determined: what time did the Kiss occur?
The professors studied vintage maps, aerial photos, and architectural blueprints before constructing a scale model of Times Square, circa 1945. They even rigged a moving sun to pass over the model so they could match the lighting and shadows on the many photographs taken by Eisenstadt and Jorgensen that day. After four years of research, the scientists determined that the shadows in Eisenstadt’s photo could only have been cast by a sun “at azimuth 270 degrees (exactly due west) and at an altitude of +22.7 degrees.” That is, the photo was taken at exactly 5:51 p.m.
Both George and Greta claimed the kiss was much earlier in the afternoon. Perhaps their memories were clouded. Or, perhaps the kissers are still a mystery, after all.
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Detail of unpublished frame by Eisenstadt, one of four taken on V-J Day in Times Square, shows Friedman punching Mendonsa in the face. (Used under fair use for non-profit educational purposes. Time & Life Pictures: Getty Images)
Questioning the Times Square Kiss in the #MeToo Era
Alfred Eisenstaedt’s iconic V-J Day photograph has long symbolized the joy of victory and return to peace. But in recent years, particularly in the wake of the #MeToo movement, the image has come under renewed scrutiny as a depiction of sexual assault rather than romantic celebration.
Greta Zimmer Friedman, later clarified that the kiss was not consensual. “It wasn’t my choice,” she recalled. “The guy just came over and grabbed.” According to Eisenstaedt, George Mendonsa was drunk and euphoric, “grabbing any and every girl in sight.”
In the 2010s, people started questioning our collective assumptions about the image. They pointed out that Eisenstaedt took four photographs of the kiss, and in two of them, Friedman is punching Mendonsa in the face.
Following Mendonsa’s death in 2019, a statue based on the photograph in Sarasota, Florida, was defaced with red graffiti reading “#MeToo.” This act of protest reignited debate. Defenders of the image argued that it captured a moment from a different era, one shaped by the jubilation of war’s end. Critics countered that even in 1945, grabbing and kissing a stranger without consent could be considered assault.
No longer simply a timeless tribute to joy at war’s end, the Times Square Kiss has become a complex icon defined by the conflicting projections of its viewers.
