Kiss, but don't tell

Next month, the region's oldest veterans will mark the 70th anniversary of V-J Day with a mix of joy for the war's end and sorrow for those who were lost.

A recent arrival in Henrico County will most likely not celebrate the occasion – but she is known around the world for her V-J Day role, just the same.

Greta Zimmer Friedman was the subject of one of the most famous photos of the 20th century, but she believes enough fuss has been made about it already.

"It's in the past," she says.

Friedman was a 21-year-old dental assistant at work on Aug. 14, 1945, when she heard patients discussing the rumor that Japan was about to surrender. Since the dentist's office was just a few blocks from Times Square in New York City, she left on her lunch break to see if the rumors were true.

"Lots of people went to Times Square to see the message," she recalled recently, noting that a lighted billboard would flash news on the outside of a building.

Over the years, Friedman has so often recounted the story of what happened next that she finds it tiresome to retell it today.

But in previous interviews, she has described a sailor who approached her from behind, grabbed her around the waist, bent her backwards and jubilantly planted a kiss.

Friedman has described the sailor's embrace as a "vise grip" and his hands as very large. She also has said that she wasn't thrilled to be grabbed by a stranger, but that "he didn't do any harm."

"It wasn't a romantic event," Friedman said in a 2005 interview conducted by the Veteran's History Project of the Library of Congress. "It was just an event of 'Thank God the war is over.' "

Photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt snapped a picture of the embrace, which was soon plastered on the cover of Life magazine – and went on to become the iconic image of ecstatic celebrations of the day.

But Friedman had no idea her picture had been taken that day and did not see the photo until she was browsing a book of Eisenstaedt's photography in the 1960s. Eisenstaedt had entitled the picture "V-J Day" – although it is commonly known as "The Kissing Sailor."

Friedman wrote immediately to Life Magazine, sure that she was the "nurse" in the photo because everything matched with her memory of the moment and with her clothing, figure, and hair – braided on top and swept up with a comb in the back.

Over the decades, however, many others have come forward claiming to be both the sailor and the woman identified as a nurse. In 1980, Life launched an all-out campaign to identify the couple, contacted Friedman again and set up a what became the first of many reunions between her and the man presumed to be the sailor: George Mendonsa of Rhode Island.

While some continue to claim themselves as the kisser or kissee, a book published in 2012 (The Kissing Sailor) by the U.S. Naval Institute identifies the couple as Friedman and Mendonsa.

Upon meeting with Mendonsa, Friedman learned that on V-J Day he and his date (who became his wife) had been at Radio City Music Hall. They left the show upon hearing the war was over, and Mendonsa has admitted he had a few drinks to celebrate and does not remember the kiss in Times Square.

He chose Friedman as the object of his affection because she was dressed like a nurse, and because he was grateful to the nurses who had cared for him and his wounded shipmates. He also was elated to hear the news that he would not have to go back to the Pacific.

Friedman and Mendonsa have reunited several times in recent decades, and they keep in touch with occasional Christmas cards. But Friedman guards her privacy closely and is close-mouthed about her "temporary" stay in Henrico as well as about how long it might last. She is visiting relatives and does not want her location disclosed.

She has said often over the years that she did nothing to become famous; that the kiss was an accident, based on Mendonsa's erroneous assumption about her clothing.

"I was just the bystander," she said in one interview. "[Mendonsa] took the action."

Any fame, she insists, should belong to him or to Eisenstaedt, the photographer who immortalized them (and who died in 1995).

Now in her 90s, all Friedman will say of the incident today is, "Everybody was very happy about the end of the war. And the people in uniform – they were relieved."