This picture was taken in Time Square in 1945 on V-J Day. It features a navy sailor, George Mendonsa, and a girl who he thought was a nurse, Greta Friedman. They call it the “photo that ended World War II.” The purpose of this photograph, that was published in many magazines, could be to show the ways the end of the war was celebrated with something as simple and small as a kiss.
The photograph is primarily focused on the sailor and the kiss with a random stranger. But if you look in the background you see a girl, who was actually on a date with Mendonsa at the moment. She is smiling and she's said before that she wasn’t bothered by the kiss at all, but the nurse was because she wasn’t even a nurse and she didn't know the man that grabbed her.
Mendonsa kissed her because after hearing that the Japanese had surrendered he ran out of the movies with his date, had a couple of drinks, and remembered how he saw nurses help the men that had been hurt at a bombing he witnessed. So he kissed the first nurse he spotted in the middle of Time Square in celebration of the war ending.
Besides the kiss, in the background of this photograph there are many people, all of which are smiling and in possible shock. It could be because of the kiss that was happening in front of them or because everyone in Time Square was celebrating the surrender of the Japanese and the end of the war.
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