World War II Veteran in Iconic Photo Dies

A man who claimed to be the sailor who famously stole a kiss in Times Square in celebration of America’s World War II victory over Japan has passed away. Glenn McDuffie was 86.

McDuffie died in a Dallas nursing home on March 9, almost 70 years after Life magazine photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt captured the classic kiss between the sailor and a young woman during a celebration of President Harry S. Truman’s announcement that the war in Japan was over. Because of the spontaneous nature of the kiss, Eisenstaedt didn’t have an opportunity to get the names and details of the two people involved.

McDuffie was one of several men and women who claimed to have been one of the subjects in the photo. His case was aided in recent years by the work of Lois Gibson, a world record-breaking forensic artist with the Houston Police Department who took numerous photos of McDuffie in various poses and matched them with the features of the sailor in the iconic photo.