After news broke that Japan had surrendered and World War II was over on August 15, 1945, photographer Alfred Aisenstaedt took a picture of a sailor jubilantly kissing a woman in Times Square.
The photograph was published a week after Victory over Japan Day, and was given a full-page spread in LIFE magazine. It made Mr Aeisenstaedt famous and became the iconic image of the war ending. The identities of the two people in the photo remained unidentified for years.
However, it has since emerged that the photo is not of a romantic couple embracing, but a more troubling scene.
Here’s the true story behind the candid shot
Greta Zimmer Friedman first saw the photograph in the 1960s, and instantly recognised that she was the woman in the white dress being kissed.
She sent photographs to LIFE magazine identifying herself, and the magazine contacted her in 1980. She brought the picture to the magazine, and Mr Aesenstaedt signed it and apologised.
Ms Friedman had been working as a dental assistant in an office in Times Square during the war. She stepped outside to see why people were celebrating, and suddenly found herself being embraced by sailor George Mendonsa.
The kiss was not a loving reconciliation, as many people believed, but instead came as a surprise to Ms Friedman.
“I felt that he was very strong,” she told Patricia Redmond in an interview for the Veterans’ History Project in 2005. “He was just holding me tight. I’m not sure about the kiss… it was just somebody celebrating. It wasn’t a romantic event. It was just an event of ‘thank god the war is over’”.
“It wasn’t my choice to be kissed,” she added. “The guy just came over and grabbed!”
In recent years, the photographed has been re-examined, and the embrace appears more forceful than at a first glance. Some people have called the event photographed a sexual assault.
George Mendonsa, the sailor in the photograph, had kissed Ms Friedman while tipsy after a date with his girlfriend and Radio City Music Hall, it later emerged. When they dashed into the street after hearing news of the war ending, Mr Mendonsa saw Ms Friedman, and kissed her because her uniform reminded him of the nurses overseas. He later described the kiss as a spontaneous act of gratitude.
Ms Friedman died in 2016, and Mr Mendonsa died last year. After his death, a statue was erected in Florida of the famous VJ Day kiss. It was soon defaced with the hashtag #MeToo in red spray paint, referring to Ms Friedman’s lack of consent in the kiss.
