The Navy sailor whose kiss with a woman in Times Square celebrating the end of the Second World War was immortalized in one of the most iconic photos of the 20th century has died.
George Mendonsa fell and suffered a seizure at the assisted living facility in Middletown, Rhode Island, where he lived with his wife of 70 years, his daughter, Sharon Molleur, told The Providence Journal.
He died two days before his 96th birthday.
Mendonsa was shown kissing Greta Zimmer Friedman, a dental assistant in a nurse’s uniform, in the photograph taken by Life magazine photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt on August 14, 1945, known as V-J Day.
The image came to represent how jubilant Americans and people around the world felt after the Japanese surrendering, ending the war that had cost an estimated 70 to 85 million lives.
George Mendonsa kissing Greta Zimmer Friedman on V-J Day
It wasn’t until decades later that Mendonsa and Friedman were identified as the couple locking lips what became one of the most widely-recognized photographs of the World War II era.
Mendonsa is survived by his wife Rita, son Ron Mendonsa and daughter Sharon Molleur.
‘He was very proud of his service and the picture and what it stood for,’ Molleur told NBC News. ‘Always, for many, many years later, it was an important part of his life.’
The sailor served at the helm of The Sullivans, a boat named for five brothers who died when the USS Juneau sank during World War II.
After the USS Bunker Hill was struck in a kamikaze attack in May of 1945, The Sullivans, steered by Mendonsa, was sent to rescue the survivors and transfer the wounded to the Bountiful, a nursing ship.
Mendonsa said he watched from the helm as the nurses tended to the wounded sailors: ‘They were in a bad way.’
Mendonsa was on leave and happened to be in Times Square when the end of the war was announced.
‘He sees the nurse, he can’t help himself,’ Lawrence Verria, coauthor of The Kissing Sailor, told the Providence Journal in the hours after Mendonsa’s passing. “He said Mendonsa grabbed Friedman and kissed her because she represented the nurses he’s seen helping the wounded sailors on the USS Bunker Hill.
‘It’s what everybody was doing on August 14, 1945,’ Verria said. ‘Everybody was kissing and hugging. As soon as the kiss was over, they went their separate ways.’
Mendonsa and Friedman returned to Times Square in 1980 to recreate the photograph. By that time they were both happily married to other people, and had not seen each other in 35 years.
Mendonsa and Friedman reunited for a CBS News segment in 2012 ahead of the 67th anniversary of V-J Day.
During that interview, Mendonsa revealed that he had been on a date with another woman named Rita Petry at Radio City Music Hall when news of the Japanese surrender was announced.
‘They stopped the show and they said: “The war is over. The Japanese have surrendered,”‘ he recalled.
Mendonsa and his date, who would later become his wife, rushed to a nearby bar where the sailor admits he ‘popped quite a few drinks’.
As they set on their way, Mendonsa spotted a woman in a nurse’s uniform – he left Petry and rushed to grab her.
‘The excitement of the war being over, plus I had a few drinks,’ he told CBS. ‘So when I saw the nurse, I grabbed her, and I kissed her.’
Friedman, who died aged 92 in 2016, interjected: ‘I did not see him approaching, and before I know it, I was in this vice grip.’
She said recognized herself in the photograph as soon as it was published in Life magazine, adding: ‘You don’t forget this guy grabbing you.’
Mendonsa didn’t know about the photograph until more than three decades later, when Life magazine asked the couple to identify themselves in 1980 and one of his friends noticed it.
Mendonsa recalled telling that friend: ‘You’re crazy’ when he told him about the photo.
‘This was 1980, 35 years after the war ended,’ Mendonsa said. ‘So he brought the magazine over to the house and, the minute I looked at it, I said: “Damn. That IS me!”‘
He said the expression on his date’s face, who can be seen with her mouth agape over his left shoulder, is proof that he is the sailor in the much-contested photograph.
‘A lot of people want to know what I was thinking,’ Petry told the New York Post in 2012. ‘It was a happy day; I was grinning like an idiot. The kiss really didn’t bother me at all. If I had been engaged, maybe.’
Petry insisted that she has never been mad that her future husband locked lips with another woman on their first date.
However, she admitted: ‘In all these years, George has never kissed me like that.’
The kiss inspired an entire sculpture series called Unconditional Surrender.