The man in the iconic photo of an exuberant Navy sailor kissing a woman in New York City’s Times Square at the end of World War II has…
The man in the iconic photo of an exuberant Navy sailor kissing a woman in New York City’s Times Square at the end of World War II has died.
George Mendonsa, 95, had a seizure and fell in an assisted living facility in Middletown, Rhode Island, Mendonsa’s daughter, Sharon Molleur, told the Providence Journal. He lived there with his wife of 70 years, Rita, and died Sunday, just two days short of his 96th birthday.
The photo was taken on Aug. 14,1945, which is known as V-J Day, the day Japan officially surrendered to the United States in World War II. Published in Life as “V-J Day in Times Square,” it came to represent how joyful Americans and people across the world felt at the end of the war, in which 406,000 Americans died and 671,000 were wounded, according to the United States Census Bureau.
