You’ve seen it a thousand times. It’s plastered on dorm room walls, printed on cheap postcards in Midtown gift shops, and shared every single August on social media. A sailor in a dark uniform grabs a woman in white, dips her back, and plants a massive kiss right in the middle of a crowded street. It’s the marine kissing nurse photo—except, here’s the first thing most people get wrong: he wasn’t a Marine.
He was a sailor. George Mendonsa was a Quartermaster 1st Class in the U.S. Navy.
It’s funny how collective memory works. We see a uniform and a moment of pure, unadulterated joy, and our brains fill in the blanks. We want it to be a Marine. We want it to be a nurse. We want it to be a long-lost couple reuniting after the horrors of World War II. But the reality of that afternoon on August 14, 1945, is a lot more chaotic, a bit more awkward, and significantly more complicated than the romanticized version we’ve sold ourselves for eighty years.
The Myth of the Marine Kissing Nurse Photo
Let’s talk about that uniform. George Mendonsa was on leave from the USS The Sullivans. He’d seen the worst of the Pacific theater. He’d watched planes hit his ship. He’d pulled men out of the water. When he got to Times Square that day, he wasn't looking for a wife; he was looking for a drink and a way to blow off steam because the war was finally, mercifully over.
People call it the marine kissing nurse photo because, to the untrained eye, the dark navy blues of a sailor’s dress uniform can look like Marine Corps "blues" in a grainy black-and-white shot. But the details matter. They matter because they change the narrative from a scripted Hollywood reunion to a spontaneous, high-energy outburst of relief.
The woman wasn't even a nurse. Greta Zimmer Friedman was a dental assistant. She was wearing her work white, which everyone—including the photographer, Alfred Eisenstaedt—mistook for a nurse's uniform. She was 21 years old. She was just heading out to see what all the noise was about. She didn't know George. She didn't even see him coming.
A Second Photographer and a Different Angle
Most people only know the Life magazine version. Eisenstaedt was the pro. He was the one who captured the perfect composition, the one where the lines of the buildings lead your eye straight to the embrace. But there was another guy there. Victor Jorgensen, a Navy photojournalist, caught the same moment from a different angle.
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Jorgensen’s photo is less "artistic." It’s a bit tighter, a bit more raw. It doesn’t have the same sweeping cinematic feel. In his shot, you can see more of the crowd's reaction. You can see the sheer physicality of the moment. Seeing both photos side-by-side takes the image out of the realm of "art" and puts it back into the realm of "news." This wasn't a posed session. This was a split second of history captured by two different men who happened to be standing on the same patch of pavement when the world exploded in joy.
The Problem With "Romantic"
We need to be honest about the ethics here. By modern standards, the marine kissing nurse photo is pretty controversial. Greta Zimmer Friedman said later in life that it wasn't exactly a choice. "It wasn't my choice to be kissed," she told the Library of Congress in 2005. "The guy just came over and kissed or grabbed."
She wasn't mad about it later. She understood the context of the day. But it’s a weird thing to navigate. We look at it as the ultimate symbol of love and peace, but for the woman in the photo, it was a sudden, forceful encounter with a stranger who happened to be very, very drunk.
George had been at Radio City Music Hall with his actual date, Rita Petry. If you look closely at some of the uncropped versions of the photo, you can actually see Rita in the background. She’s grinning. She ended up marrying George. They were married for 70 years. Imagine that: your husband becomes the world’s most famous romantic icon for kissing a total stranger while you’re standing three feet away.
Why the Identity Took Decades to Prove
For years, dozens of men claimed to be the sailor. Dozens of women claimed to be the nurse. It became a bit of a cottage industry for elderly veterans. Life magazine actually put out a call in 1980 to find the pair, and the floodgates opened.
It took forensic analysis to settle it. We’re talking about "forensic" in the literal sense.
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- Anthropological analysis: Experts studied the bone structure and scars on George’s hands.
- Photography timing: Researchers at Texas State University actually used the shadows on the buildings to calculate the exact time of day—5:51 p.m.—to see if it matched the various claimants' stories.
- Facial recognition: Later technology compared the 1945 faces with the claimants in their 80s.
George and Greta were eventually confirmed. It wasn't until the late 2000s that the debate really died down. George was a fisherman from Rhode Island. He was a tough guy. He wasn't looking for fame, but he wanted his place in history. He wanted people to know that he was the one who felt that specific lightning bolt of V-J Day energy.
The Cultural Weight of a Single Frame
Why does this specific image—often mislabeled as the marine kissing nurse photo—stick with us?
It’s the contrast. The dark suit against the white dress. The rigid lines of the street against the fluid curve of the dip. It looks like a dance. In a year that had been defined by death, destruction, and the mushroom cloud over Hiroshima just days prior, this was the opposite of death. It was life. It was aggressive, messy, human life.
It has been turned into statues. There’s a massive "Unconditional Surrender" sculpture in Sarasota, Florida, that recreates the pose. People go there to take selfies. They recreate the kiss. They try to capture a bit of that 1945 magic without the 1945 trauma.
But when we strip away the "marine" label and the "nurse" label, we're left with two people who were caught in a tectonic shift of history. Greta had escaped the Nazis in Austria. Her parents didn't make it out. For her, that day in New York wasn't just about a kiss; it was the definitive end of the nightmare that had destroyed her world. George was a man who had seen his friends die in the Pacific. He was celebrating survival.
Common Misconceptions to Clear Up
- They were a couple: Nope. Total strangers. They never met again until decades later for a reunion organized by the media.
- It was staged: Eisenstaedt was known for "finding" moments, not making them. He saw the sailor running around kissing every woman in sight—old, young, it didn't matter. He waited for the one in white because the color contrast was better for his film.
- The sailor was a Marine: Again, he was Navy. The marine kissing nurse photo is a misnomer that has persisted because of the dark uniform.
- The woman was a nurse: She was a dental assistant. The "nurse" title stuck because of the white outfit.
How to View the Photo Today
If you’re looking at the marine kissing nurse photo today, look at the hands. Look at the way George’s hand is balled into a fist or gripping Greta. Look at the way Greta’s arms are pinned. It’s a document of a specific moment in time when the rules of society briefly evaporated because the world had just narrowly avoided ending.
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It’s okay to find it beautiful. It’s also okay to find it a little uncomfortable. History isn't a Hallmark card. It’s messy. The most famous photo in American history is a record of a sailor, a dental assistant, a jealous girlfriend in the background, and a world that was trying to remember how to breathe again.
Understanding the Timeline
To truly grasp the weight of the moment, you have to look at the week leading up to it.
August 6: Hiroshima.
August 9: Nagasaki.
August 14: The announcement of the Japanese surrender.
The tension in New York City was a physical thing. People had been living in a state of high-alert grief for years. When the news hit the tickers in Times Square, it wasn't a "polite" celebration. It was an explosion. George Mendonsa had been at a bar. He was "over-served," to put it mildly. He saw the woman in white, his brain (primed by his experiences with nurses on hospital ships) associated her with the people who cared for the wounded, and he acted on impulse.
Actionable Insights for History Buffs
If you want to dive deeper into the history of the marine kissing nurse photo or the iconography of WWII, here’s how to do it right:
- Check the Library of Congress: They have the oral history from Greta Zimmer Friedman. It’s her voice, her words. It’s the most authentic way to understand the female perspective of that afternoon.
- Visit the USS The Sullivans: If you’re ever in Buffalo, New York, you can visit the ship George served on. It provides the "why" behind his exuberance.
- Look for the "Third Man": In the background of the photo, there are other sailors and civilians. Each one has a story. Researching the crowd gives you a better sense of the scale of the V-J Day celebrations.
- Compare the Eisenstaedt vs. Jorgensen shots: Look at the "V-J Day in Times Square" (Eisenstaedt) and "Kissing the War Goodbye" (Jorgensen). Analyzing the different perspectives is a great lesson in how photojournalism can shape a narrative through framing alone.
The marine kissing nurse photo remains a pillar of American culture because it captures the exact second a global sigh of relief was breathed. It wasn't a Marine, and she wasn't a nurse, but the emotion in the frame was 100% real. That’s why we’re still talking about it eighty years later.