US Navy veteran in iconic WW2 kissing photo dies

Another angle of the events of 14 August 1945 near Times Square was taken by a US Navy photographer.

A Texas man thought to be the US Navy sailor kissing a nurse in an iconic end of World War Two photo has died. Glenn McDuffie died aged 86 at a nursing home in Dallas on Sunday (Sunday 9th March 2014), his daughter said.

McDuffie’s claim to be the man in the famed VJ day photo was supported by a police forensic artist’s analysis. Photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt took the image as the news of Japan’s surrender filtered through New York’s Times Square on 14 August 1945.

McDuffie had told US media that he was changing subway trains when he heard that Japan had surrendered.

Glenn McDuffie: ”She was standing out there in the middle of the street… I went over there and kissed her”. “I was so happy. I ran out in the street,” said McDuffie, who was then 18 and on his way to visit his girlfriend.

“And then I saw that nurse,” he said.

“She saw me hollering and with a big smile on my face… I just went right to her and kissed her.” Edith Shain, who worked in a nearby hospital, claimed to be the nurse in the photo. She died in 2010 (Nurse in iconic WWII photo dies).

Nurse in iconic WWII photograph dies aged 91

A 91-year-old who said she was the nurse photographed being kissed in Times Square in New York at the end of World War II has died (Sunday 20th June 2010).

Edith Shain said she was grabbed and kissed by an unknown American soldier on 14 August 1945. The picture by Alfred Eisenstaedt was taken as people celebrated Japan’s surrender, and it became an iconic image.

The identity of the sailor remains disputed (see story above). Ms Shain died at her home in Los Angeles on Sunday, her family said.

‘Marvellous feeling’

The identity of the nurse in the photograph was not known until the late 1970s when Ms Shain wrote to the photographer saying that she was the woman in the picture.

However, Eisenstaedt, who died in 1995, said he was never sure who the woman in the picture was. Recalling the famous kiss, she said she could not identify the man.

“I went from hospital to Times Square that day because the war was over, and where else does a New Yorker go?

“And this guy grabbed me and we kissed, and then I turned one way and he turned the other.”

Ms Shain returned to the scene of the kiss at the head of a group of WWII veterans during the New York Veterans Day parade in 2008.

She then said it was thrilling to be back in New York and “see the street where we had been when World War II was over, when that marvellous feeling was flooding the nation”.