HISTORY's Moment in Media: Victory Over Japan Day with Life Magazine's "The Kiss"
For decades it was seen as an iconic image -- perhaps even the iconic image -- of American exuberance as a long and brutal war came to an end. More recently it has been examined more critically, revealed as a troublingly celebratory record of a strong man taking advantage of a nonconsenting woman. It remains one of the most iconic images of 20th century photojournalism, and it was shot 77 years ago this month on August 14, 1945, when Japan's unconditional surrender to the Allies ended World War II and Americans across the country took to the streets to celebrate V-J Day -- Victory Over Japan Day.
It is "The Kiss," the famous shot of a sailor and nurse kissing in Times Square. Photographed that afternoon and published the week after in Life magazine, it was part of a 12-page special section called "Victory Celebrations," a photographic record of jubilant scenes from across the nation.
At the time, Life filled the role Walter Cronkite's CBS Evening News would in the decades that followed or that CNN did around the turn of the 21st century. It was the definitive visual chronicle of what happened in this country, highlighting the best news images from the best photojournalists to provide a weekly portrait of America. One of Life magazine's most important and prolific photographers was Alfred Eisenstaedt, a German immigrant who arrived in America in 1935 and shot more than 90 covers for Life and more than 2,500 photo stories. "All photographers have to do is find and catch the story-telling moment," Eistenstaedt said in his most famous quote. On V-J Day, he took to the streets of midtown Manhattan to find that moment.
Eisenstaedt subsequently told slightly different versions of how he got the legendary shot, but the gist was always the same: Times Square was full of revelers, and he was armed with a small and lightweight Leica IIIa camera that made it easy for him to move around and take informal shots. He spotted the sailor kissing nearly every woman he could find, and when he saw him kiss the nurse, Eisenstaedt realized the composition of the sailor's dark uniform against the nurse's white one created the composition he was looking for. He took four frames and picked the one where the nurse's bent body parallels the sailor's bent arm.
Eisenstadt never got his subjects' names, and because their faces are obscured, their identities were never known for years. Periodically, women or couples would come to Life's offices claiming to be the people in the photo. In trying to help identify the couple, a team of astrophysicists examined the photo: considering the angles of the sun and shadows, they determined it was shot at 5:51 p.m.
By the early part of this century, George Mendonsa had been identified as the sailor. His physical features matched the man in the photo. He had had a few drinks that day, he said in interviews, and he was excited by the day, so he grabbed the nurse and kissed her.
The nurse was identified as Greta Zimmer Friedman, who'd stepped out of the dental where she worked to see the hubbub. She had seen the photo and recognized her figure, her clothes and her hairstyle, and she wrote to the magazine. "Time went by, and in 1980 Life magazine contacted me and I brought the picture, and Mr. Eisenstaedt signed it and he apologized," Zimmer said in a 2005 interview for the Library of Congress. She said she had never seen the experience as a loving moment. "I felt that he was very strong," she said of Mendonsa in that interview. "He was just holding me tight … It wasn't a romantic event. It was an event of 'Thank God the war is over.'"
But Friedman also said, in 2015: "I can't think of anybody who considered that as an assault. It was a happy event." And according to Mendonsa's obituary, the pair had struck up a friendship later in life.
Today, Life magazine is long gone except for the occasional special issue, but its website lives on. There is one gallery that shows the general excitement at Times Square on V-J Day, and its final image depicts Eisenstaedt himself kissing a female reporter.
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