Rick Patrick, Greene Publishing, Inc.
It wasn't a planed event, well not entirely anyway. It was just one of those completely spontaneous moments caught on film by photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt, that would capture the imagination of the nation for generations. It took place in Times Square in New York City just after the announcement was made that Japan had unconditionally surrendered, thus bringing an end to one of the bloodiest chapters in all of world history, World War II.
For many years the identities of the two people involved in this photograph were not known. Then, in 2012, the book The Kissing Sailor: The Mystery Behind the Photo that Ended World War II revealed the long speculated identities of the two principals in the famous photograph. According to the book's authors, Lawrence Verria and George Galdorisi, the two people in the photograph are George Mendonsa and Greta Zimmer. Mendonsa was a Navy quartermaster and was 22 years old in August of 1945. His ship had seen quite a lot of action in the Pacific and he was on leave in New York ahead of what everyone speculated would be an invasion of mainland Japan. Mendonsa had witnessed an attack by two Japanese kamikaze planes on the ship USS Bunker Hill, an attack that killed nearly 350 sailors. Mendonsa had helped pull many badly burned sailors from the water and had watched in awe, the nurses who helped tend to the wounded. When he saw Zimmer in what he thought was a nurse's uniform, his memory of those nurses was brought back to his mind and he decided to kiss the first nurse he saw. Ironically, Mendonsa was on a first date with the woman he would eventually marry when the famous photograph was taken.
This Unconditional Surrender statue stands at the marina in Sarasota's Bayfront Park. The 26 foot high, 15,000 pound statue recollects one of the most iconic images from the end of World War II.
The woman in the photograph is widely believed to be Greta Zimmer Friedman. She was a 21 year old dental assistant in August of 1945 and had gone outside to Times Square from her office. In 1939, Zimmer's Austrian Jewish family insisted that she escape Austria with her two sisters and flee to the United States. She later learned that both her parents had died in the Holocaust. Of the famous kiss, she never told anyone about her experience that day for many years. She was less than thrilled with Mendonsa's kiss. “I wasn't kissing him, he was kissing me,” recalled Zimmer. Zimmer later married and settled in Frederick, Md. She passed away on Sept. 11, of this year.
More than the mystery surrounding the identities of the two photograph subjects could be the mystery of why the image so captured the imagination of the nation, even to this day. Perhaps it could be because the photograph captured the raw emotion of that shared experience that the world had just experienced. Thousands of lives had just been spared. The hope and relief that was evident at that moment are feelings that transcend time and speak to us, even today. This photograph shows the common humanity that we all share, even with strangers, after having experienced the most inhumane of all experiences.