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.
