This is a Virtual Geocache that requires you to visit the location and complete the logging tasks described below. Find logs will be deleted if photos are not posted with your logs. Additionally there is a key piece of information you will also need to either email me or send to me via the geocaching message center.
Metered parking is nearby but it is hard to find on weekends. However I came by before 9am on a Satuday and had no probems. In fact it was free until 10am!
Unconditional Surrender is a sculpture by Seward Johnson resembling two photographs taken separately by professional photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt (V–J day in Times Square) and U.S. Navy photo journalist Victor Jorgensen (Kissing the War Goodbye). It portrays a U.S. Navy sailor grabbing and kissing a stranger—a woman in a white dress—on Victory over Japan Day ("V-J Day") in New York City's Times Square on August 14, 1945.
Photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt was a German-born American photographer and photojournalist. He began his career in Germany prior to World War II but achieved prominence as a staff photographer for Life Magazine after moving to the U.S. Life featured more than 90 of his pictures on its covers. Speaking on the subject of his most famous photo he stated “I saw a sailor running along the street grabbing any and every girl in sight. Whether she was a grandmother, stout, thin, old, didn't make a difference. I turned around and clicked the moment the sailor kissed the nurse. I took exactly four pictures. It was done within a few seconds. Only one is right, on account of the balance. In the others the emphasis is wrong — the sailor on the left side is either too small or too tall. People tell me that when I am in heaven they will remember this picture.” The photograph was published a week later in Life magazine, among many photographs of celebrations around the United States that were presented in a twelve-page section titled "Victory Celebrations”.
Photographer Victor Jorgensen was a former Navy photo journalist who was also in Times Square that afternoon. His photo was from a different angle and in a less dramatic exposure than that of a photograph taken by Alfred Eisenstaedt. The next day his photo was published in The New York Times. His photograph, which was taken while he was on duty, is retained in the National Archives and Records Administration.
The Woman is generally believed to be Greta Zimmer Friedman, although, a woman named Edith Shain also claimed to be the woman in question. Lawrence Verria and George Galdorisi, authors of The Kissing Sailor, a 2012 book about the identity of the couple, used interviews of claimants, expert photo analysis, identification of people in the background and consultations with forensic anthropologists and facial recognition specialists and concluded that the woman was Greta Zimmer Friedman. They discount Shain’s claim as her height of just 4 ft 10 was insufficient in comparison with the height of any of the men claiming to be the sailor. Friedman stated “It wasn't my choice to be kissed. The guy just came over and grabbed! I found out later, he was so happy that he did not have to go back to the Pacific where they already had been through the war. And the reason he grabbed someone dressed like a nurse was that he just felt very grateful to nurses who took care of the wounded." Widely misattributed as being a photograph of a nurse, Friedman was actually a dental assistant with a similar uniform. Friedman died at age 92 on September 8, 2016, in Richmond, Virginia, due to age-related health complications.
Numerous men have claimed to be The Sailor, including George Mendonça , Carl Muscarello ,and Glenn McDuffie.
George Mendonça of Newport, Rhode Island was on leave from the USS The Sullivans watching a movie with his future wife, Rita Petry, at Radio City Music Hall when the doors opened and people started screaming the war was over. George and Rita joined the partying on the street, but when they could not get into the packed bars decided to walk down the street. It was then that George saw a woman in a white dress walk by and took her into his arms and kissed her, "I had quite a few drinks that day and I considered her one of the troops—she was a nurse." Mendonca was identified by a team of volunteers from the Naval War College in August 2005 as "the kisser" based on matching scars and tattoos in the photograph. They made their determination after much study including photographic analysis by the Mitsubishi Electric Research Laboratories (MERL) in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Mendonsa died on February 17, 2019, aged 95 two days shy of his 96th birthday.
Carl Muscarello is a retired police officer with the New York City Police Department, now living in Plantation, Florida. In 1995 he claimed that he was in Times Square on August 14, 1945 and that he kissed numerous women. A distinctive birthmark on his hand enabled his mother to identify him as the subject. Muscarello has described his condition on August 14, 1945 as being quite drunk and having no clear memory of his actions in the square, stating that his mother claimed he was the man after seeing the photograph and he came to believe it.
Glenn McDuffie laid claim in 2007 and was supported by Houston Police Department forensic artist Lois Gibson. Gibson's forensic analysis compared the Eisenstaedt photographs with current-day photographs of McDuffie, analyzing key facial features identical on both sets. She measured his ears, facial bones, hairline, wrist, knuckles, and hand, and compared those to enlargements of Eisenstaedt's picture. McDuffie said he passed five polygraph tests confirming his claim to be the man. McDuffie says that on that day he was on the subway to Brooklyn to visit his girlfriend and came out at Times Square where people were celebrating in the streets. Excited that his brother, who was being held by the Japanese as a prisoner of war, would be released, McDuffie began hollering and jumping up and down. A nurse saw him, and opened her arms to him. In apparent conflict with photographer Eisenstaedt's recollections of the event, McDuffie said he ran over to her and kissed her for a long time so that Eisenstaedt could take the photograph.
To log this virtual geocache you will need to:
- Take a photograph of the sculpture with yourself in the foreground. If, for privacy purposes, you not wish to show your face then "wave" at the sculpture by placing your hand in the shot. You need to include sufficient evidence that you were actually there on the day of your log. Do NOT send me photos.
- In front of the sculpture is a collection of personalized dedication/commemorative bricks. Find the one with the term "USS Midway Museum Exhibits Team". MAKE SURE YOU FIND THAT EXACT WORDING! A few of them sound alike. Directly beneath that is a brick with the name of a man and woman. Email me (dougandsuzy@hotmail.com), or send via the Geocaching message center, the names of those two persons. Do NOT include them in your log.
Virtual Rewards 2.0 - 2019/2020
This Virtual Cache is part of a limited release of Virtuals created between June 4, 2019 and June 4, 2020. Only 4,000 cache owners were given the opportunity to hide a Virtual Cache. Learn more about Virtual Rewards 2.0 on the Geocaching Blog.