A sailor in the photographic depressions of the Second World War: NPR

George Mendonsa, the Navy sailor whose passionate kiss in Times Square symbolized the exuberance of a nation at the end of World War II, passed away. He was 95 years old.

The photographer never got the sailor's name, but Mendonsa claimed that it was him, and many experts who analyzed his facial structure came to the same conclusion.

Mendonsa died as a result of a fall following a fall in an accommodation facility located in Rhode Island, said her daughter at The Providence Journal. He had two days left before his 96th birthday.

The iconic photo on the cover of Life The magazine was taken by Alfred Eisenstaedt and became one of the most recognizable pictures of the twentieth century. A marine photographer also captured the same moment, and this version of the picture (the one above) is often seen in the newspapers.

After the surrender of Japan in August 1945, impromptu celebrations broke out throughout the country. During one of them, Mendonsa and her rendezvous crossed Times Square when he saw the woman, whom he considered a nurse. The joy of the moment and his admiration for the nurses who looked after his comrades forced him to kiss him, he told the Library of Congress Veterans History Project in 2005.

As a sailor in the Pacific, Mendonsa was aboard the USS Bunker Hill aircraft carrier when Japanese kamikaze pilots attacked. Men were trapped in the ship's fires, he said, while others jumped overboard and waited to be picked up.

A few hours later, the Mendonsa ship transferred the wounded to a hospital ship called USS Bountiful.

"I was looking at how nurses cared for the wounded when they were sent," he told the Library of Congress. "And since that day, I think I've had a soft spot for nurses."

A few months later, fed by cheering and a few drinks, Mendonsa went to the Times Square woman.

"It was his uniform," he says. "If this girl did not have the uniform of the nurse, I sincerely believe that I would never have seized it."

Mendonsa said nothing to the woman; he has just kissed her. "It happened, she followed her path and me, mine." Why did not he ask for his name? "I was with an appointment," he says.

His appointment did not bother him – in fact, both went to get married. Mendonsa did not receive the name of the woman that he kissed. But years later, Greta Zimmer Friedman saw the picture and wrote to the editors of Life to say that it was her. In 1980, the Mendonsa and Freidman were reunited when the magazine gathered them for a photo break.

Friedman, a Holocaust refugee who grew up in Austria, told the Veterans History Project that she was 21 years old and was working as a dental assistant when she was immortalized in the photo.

"It was not a romantic event," she says about the surprise kiss. "It was just an event of the kind" Thank God the war is over. "It's a day everyone celebrated because everyone had someone in the war and that's it. They were returning home. "

Friedman passed away in 2016.