Today commemorates the 63rd anniversary of VJ Day. At 6:10 p.m. EDT on August 14, 1945, the United States received word of Emperor Hirohito’s surrender and declared Victory in Japan - VJ Day - effectively ending WWII. As the news spread, celebrations began throughout the world.
One of the most famous photographs ever published by Life - VJ Day in Times Square - was shot on August 14th, 1945. Alfred Eisenstaedt was in the square taking candids when he spotted a sailor “running along the street grabbing any and every girl in sight,” he later explained. “I was running ahead of him with my Leica looking back over my shoulder… Then suddenly, in a flash, I saw something white being grabbed. I turned around and clicked the moment the sailor kissed the nurse.”
The participants in the kiss were never confirmed by Eisenstaedt, whose notes on the photo were not found until after his death in 1995. Life, however, accepted nurse Edith Cullen Shain’s claim to the honor in a handwritten letter to Eisenstaedt 35 years later. Shain was 27 on VJ Day.
Over 20 men have claimed to be the sailor but none has been positively identified. In August 2005, a team of volunteers at the Naval War College claimed the sailor was George Mendonça of Newport, Rhode Island. And Shain once said she believed the man to be former New York City police detective Carl Muscarello, although she later recanted that statement.
But Houston Police biometrics expert Lois Gibson pegged the sailor in the picture as Glenn McDuffie after conducting a thorough forensic analysis in which she conclusively identified McDuffie and excluded Mendonça and Muscarello.