NEW YORK The woman in an iconic photo shown kissing an ecstatic sailor in Times Square celebrating the end of World War II has died. On Thursday Greta Friedman, as she later became, died from pneumonia in Richmond, Virginia, aged 92.
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In a way, her exuberance was a reason for what happened: Friedman, who was a dental assistant but was thought over the years to be a nurse because of her uniform, had been at work when she heard rumors that the war was over.
As Japan surrendered to the United States on August 14, 1945, also known as the V-J Day, people of NY city were seen celebrating the news in the streets, bars and restaurants. In fact, Mendonsa was on a date at the time with nurse Rita Petry, who would later become his wife.
Eisenstaedt’s photo, “V-J Day in Times Square”, ran the following week in Life magazine.
Mr Mendonsa and Ms Friedman were not identified until 1980 when Life asked the unknown pair to come forward.
Ms Friedman first saw Eisenstaedt’s photograph in a book in the 1960s and although she contacted Life the magazine was not interested. In the years since it was taken, 11 men and three women claimed to be the people depicted in the photo, the newspaper said. (The kiss didn’t dampen the young couple’s enthusiasm for one another; Mendonsa and Petry married and remain a couple in Rhode Island to this day.) A U.S. Navy photojournalist, Lt. Victor Jorgensen, caught the same picture from a different angle.
As she entered Times Square, Ms Friedman was grabbed and kissed by George Mendonsa, a sailor on leave and overjoyed by the war’s end.
CBS News said Ms Friedman would be laid to rest with her late husband, Mischa Elliot Friedman, at Arlington National Cemetery in Virginia.
In a report on Friedman’s death, The New York Times said Saturday, the picture took on “darker undertones” in later years as an instance of sexual assault, based on how Friedman described it: “I felt that he was very strong”.
The photograph has become one of the most famous photographs of the 20th century.
Lawrence Verria authored a book titled “The Kissing Sailor: The Mystery Behind the Photo that Ended World War II” in 2012 and both were proved to be indeed in the iconic phhoto.
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The blogger noted comments from Greta Friedman’s 2005 Veterans History Project interview.
