THE KISS IN TIMES SQUARE

THE KISS IN TIMES SQUARE

 

V-J Day in Times Square is a photograph by Alfred Eisenstaedt Alfred that portrays an American sailor kissing a woman in a white dress on Vitory over Japan DayVictory  (V-J Day) in Times Square in New York City, on August 14, 1945. The photograph, taken with a Leica IIIa camera, was published a week later in Life magazine among many photographs of celebrations around the United States. Eisenstaedt was photographing a spontaneous event that occurred in Times Square as the announcement of the end of the war on Japan was made by U.S. President Harry S. Truman at seven o'clock.

The photograph is known under various titles, such as V-J Day in Times Square, V-Day, and The Kiss.

Because Eisenstaedt was photographing rapidly changing events during the celebrations he did not have an opportunity to get the names and details. The photograph does not clearly show the faces of either person involved in this embrace and several people have claimed to be the subjects. The photograph was shot just south of 45th Street looking north from a location where Broadway and Seventh Avenue converge. Soon after ward, throngs of people crowded into the square and it became a sea of people.

Edith Shain wrote to Eisenstaedt in the late 1970s claiming to be the woman in the picture. In August 1945, Shain was working at Doctor's Hospital in New York City as a nurse when she and a friend heard on the radio that World War had ended. They went to Times Square where all the celebrating was and as soon as she arrived on the street from the subway, the sailor grabbed her in an embrace and kissed her. She related that at the time she thought she might as well let him kiss her since he fought for her in the war. Shain did not claim that she was the woman in the white dress until many years later when she wrote to Eisenstaedt. He notified the magazine that he had received her letter claiming to be the subject

George Mendonça of Newport, Rhode Island, on leave from the USS The Sullivans (DD-537), was watching a movie with his future wife, Rita, at Radio City Music Hall when the doors opened and people started screaming the war was over. George and Rita joined the partying on the street, but when they couldn't get into the packed bars decided to walk down the street. It was then that George saw a woman in a white dress walk by and took her into his arms and kissed her, "I had quite a few drinks that day and I considered her one of the troops—she was a nurse."[In one of the four pictures that Eisenstaedt took, Mendonça claims that Rita is visible in the background behind the kissing couple.

In 1987, George Mendonça filed a lawsuit against Time Inc. in Rhode Island state court, alleging that he was the sailor in the photograph.