Mr Mendonsa died aged 95 after suffering a seizure from a fall at his care home in Middletown, Rhode Island, his daughter Sharon Molleur told the Providence Journal. He lived at the care home with his wife Rita for 70 years, and died just two days before his 96th birthday Mr Mendonsa has been identified in the famous WW2 photo kissing a young nurse, Greta Zimmer Friedman, in the middle of Times Square in New York amidst WW2 celebrations.
The servicemen were celebrating Japan’s surrender to the US.
Speaking about the iconic moment, Mr Mendonsa told CBS news in 2012: “It was the moment. You come back from the Pacific and finally, the war ends.
“The excitement of the war being over, plus I had a few drinks. So when I saw the nurse, I grabbed her and I kissed her.”
Mr Mendonsa was on a date with Rita Petrie, who can be seen in the background of the photo, when he heard the war was over.
Excited at never having to return to combat, he grabbed a nurse nearby and kissed her.
However, Ms Petrie said she did not mind at the time – and she later became his wife of many years.
Speaking to CBS in 2012, she said: “Either I was dopey or something, but it didn’t bother me!
“It’ll come up that he’s ‘The Kissing Sailor’. So the kissing sailor has to think he has to kiss everybody. So he does!”
Ms Friedman, who was working as a dental assistant at the time, was not aware of the photo until the Sixties, but said the moment wasn’t as romantic as it seemed.
She later recalled: “It wasn’t much of a kiss. It was just somebody celebrating. It wasn’t a romantic event.”
Ms Friedman died in 2016 aged 92.
The photographer, Alfred Eisenstadt, described the landmark day on 14 August 1945.
Writing in the book book Eisenstadt on Eisenstadt, he said: “I was running ahead of him with my Leica looking back over my shoulder but none of the pictures that were possible pleased me.
“Then suddenly, in a flash, I saw something white being grabbed. I turned around and clicked the moment the sailor kissed the nurse.
“If she had been dressed in a dark dress I would never have taken the picture.”