EAST BAY — A striking piece of history will roll in this Saturday’s Fourth of July parade in Bristol, when George Mendonsa (pronounced Mendoza), the “kissing sailor,” and his photo partner Greta Friedman appear in person on the Raytheon Corporation’s float in the military division.

Their appearance this week comes almost 65 years after World War II came to an end, and their photo in Life magazine became an icon of that great struggle two generations ago. The famous photo was taken in Times Square, New York, a few minutes after the surrender of Japan was announced.

George Mendonsa, who was a quartermaster on the bridge of the destroyer The Sullivans for 26 months and is entitled to wear 11 battle stars, is hale and hearty after a long career as a commercial fisherman. At 85 he is still going strong, and he and his wife Rita live in Middletown surrounded with memorabilia.

George got his start in fishing off the shoreline of Newport with his father Arsenio, running traps near Price’s Neck. His folks were both from the Portuguese island of Madeira. The sea and hard work were their way of life. “My father really knew how to handle boats and catch fish,” he recalls.

Like many in his generation, he was in high school when the Japanese struck Pearl Harbor, and was right end on the Rogers High football team. His brother played quarterback. “The effect of the war was too much to ignore, so by Thanksgiving time of 1942 I enlisted. I finished boot training in February and quartermaster school in June, both in Newport,” he recalls. He was assigned to The Sullivans, a destroyer under construction in San Francisco, and by the end of the year had arrived at Pearl Harbor. The job of quartermaster, which is working on the ship’s bridge, fit hand and glove with experiences on the water in his early years.

His ship was assigned to Destroyer Squadron 52, which served in Task Force 38.2 under Admiral Mark Mitcher.

Through many Hurricanes

He’s been through so many hurricanes he has trouble keeping them all straight, but the worst was the great typhoon in the Philippine Sea in World War II, when three destroyers in his task force — the Hull, Spence and Monahan — capsized during the storm, with a loss of 790 men.

The episode took place Dec. 18, 1944 during the invasion of Mindoro. The loss was attributed to a lack of storm warnings, and the three vessels low on fuel, which led to the vessels being unstable in the high winds and rough seas.

George recalls the problems aboard The Sullivans during the typhoon, and as lead quartermaster he had the touchy work of keeping his ship’s bow into the wind and waves while tethered to a tanker.

“We were 75 to 100 feet apart from the tanker and were both making 12 knots into the wind, which by then was hitting 75 knots. The skipper and I worked the ship to his commands: ‘Bring her in! Take her out!’ The two hoses between us and the tanker were jumping up and down like a yo-yo, and they finally parted.”

“When the skipper called off refueling we had 67 per cent capacity in our fuel tanks — just about enough fuel to get us through that storm. The trouble with handling a ship with a light load during a heavy storm is that she can get top-heavy and easily roll over if she gets broadside to the wrong wave,” he added.

Three months earlier the same conditions doomed the destroyer Warrington off the East Coast, when the Great Atlantic Hurricane of 1944 overwhelmed the ship and 251 men were lost. This storm sank the Vineyard Sound Lightship with a loss of its 12 crewmen.

He remembers the 1938 Hurricane wiping out his father’s fishing camp on a small island in Price’s Neck Cove, off Newport’s Ten Mile Drive. He vividly remembers his father, with his helper Louis Gaspar, saving the cook at the fishing camp as the waves rolled over the tiny island. Three out of four pigs kept on the island during the summer made it back to the mainland alive — and onto the Mendonsas’ dinner table that winter.

“In a storm my father was good at finding a safe spot for the boats up in the cove, so he didn’t lose any,” he recalls.

At that time the Coast Guard station was at Price’s Neck, but the hurricane destroyed their base and they moved permanently to Castle Hill.

He also recalls Hurricane Carol in 1954, and other huge storms that have come and gone, but none left a mark equal to the typhoon in the Southwest Pacific 65 years ago and his experience keeping his destroyer from ramming a tanker.

Seaman’s log tells it all

Through 26 months on the bridge of The Sullivans he kept a personal log book, which reminds the reader of how his ship earned 11 battle stars during its two years in combat. “Hit Palau,” is followed by other locations bombarded including Woleai, New Guinea, Truk, Marianas, Iwo Jima, Palau, Mindanao, Manila, Central Philippines, Chi Jima, Formosa, Luzon, Kyushu, some of these several times over.

His ship took part in aiding injured sailors from the carrier Bunker Hill which was hit by intense Japanese kamikaze attacks. The carrier suffered the loss of 346 killed, 43 missing, and 264 wounded. George’s ship recovered 166 survivors, many of whom were seriously burned.

His log also records the battleship South Dakota being hit, the cruisers Canberra and Houston being torpedoed, the carrier Princeton being sunk, and the carrier Enterprise being hit.

With the invasion of Japan already on the drawing boards, on June 15, 1945 Mendonsa’s ship was ordered back to the San Francisco shipyard where it was built, to be refitted for the invasion — off with the torpedo tubes and on with more 40mm anti-aircraft guns.

This set into motion his return on leave to Rhode Island, and meeting his future wife Rita Petry. It also placed him in downtown Manhattan on Aug. 14, 1945, where he and Rita took in a performance by the Rockettes at Radio City Music Hall.

Halfway through the show there was a pounding on the doors, the lights came on, and it was announced that the Japanese had surrendered and the war was over. Pandemonium broke out and soon George and Rita joined the celebration in Times Square, hugging and kissing passersby.

A passerby who caught George’s eye was Greta Friedman, a dental assistant who was outfitted in a typical nurse’s uniform. In George’s mind flashed an image of the Navy nurses he had seen helping the burn victims from the carrier Bunker Hill three months earlier. He gave her a big hug and kiss while Rita patiently looked on.

Life magazine photographer Alfred Eisenstadt was recording this kiss — he took four photos in quick time — and one of these would appear in the magazine’s next issue. To most who saw the epic photo, it represented the joy of a long war ending.

George returned to his ship in San Francisco, and instead of preparing for the invasion of Japan the ship was sent to San Diego. He was a crew member when the ship was decommissioned in December 1945, and by the first week of January 1946 he was discharged and returned to Newport.

George and Rita were married in 1946, and meanwhile his life turned back to the sea. His family fishing business, known today as Tallman and Mack, prospered and he was recognized around Rhode Island as a spokesman for the commercial fishing industry.

Takes on a life of its own

But the photo in Life magazine began to take on a life of its own as it circulated to various corners of the world.

The fact is Life magazine, nor its photographer, did not record the names of the principal characters in the photo. Without names under the photo, a mystery developed over who the kissing couple really was. George and Rita knew, but in time several other people stepped forward claiming “ownership,” including 10 former sailors and several women.

The photo’s popularity led to various investigations, all concluding what George and Rita knew: George Mendonsa was the sailor!

Evidence on their side included Rita’s face clearly showing in one of Eisenstadt’s four exposures while she was watching George’s proceedings with Greta. The photos also captured several distinct physical clues: a tattoo on his left arm, a bump on his left arm, his huge hands, a scar on his right eyebrow, a distinct vein pattern on the back of his right hand, plus a first class quartermaster’s insignia sticking out of the pocket of his newly-purchased uniform. He had not had time to sew on the identity of rank.

During this period three experts have confirmed George and Rita’s assertions. A forensic analysis of the four photos by Prof. Richard Benson, professor of photography at Yale University, concluded that George was the sailor. A 3D facial analysis by the Mitsubishi Electrical Research Laboratory at Cambridge, Mass. came up with the same opinion. The third study, initiated in 2008 at the behest of Lawrence Verria, a Bristol resident and North Kingstown high school teacher, was carried out at the University of Michigan under Dr. Norman Sauer, a nationally-renowned forensic anthropologist.

After studying the case for over three months with his graduate students, Sauer concluded that Mendonsa’s physical traits are consistent with that of the kissing sailor, and that other contenders can be eliminated.

The nurse’s identity remained a mystery until Greta Friedman, now of Frederic, Md. stepped forward and fit the mould — the mould being a girl almost as tall as the giant sailor. All other applicants were under five feet.

Greta informed all concerned that she was a dental hygienist, not a nurse, and had escaped from her native Austria, and its Nazi oppression of the Jews, in the late 1930s. Family members left behind died in the Holocaust. Her two adult children are expected to accompany her to Rhode Island this weekend.

Mr. Verria is working on the text of a book about the “kissing sailor” and hopes to have it in print next year, the 65th anniversary of V-J Day. A strong backer of Mendonsa and Friedman, he says “having both Friedman and Mendonsa at this year’s Bristol Fourth of July parade is quite rare and special. I am very excited for both George and Greta.”

Mr. Verria will be on the float, as will a fellow crew member from The Sullivans, Lou Parris of Boston.

Phone calls from Brazil

Even in recent years he has had phone calls from people who have seen the photo for the first time. He recently received a call from a lady in Brazil who identified herself as a grand-daughter of his father’s long-lost brother. The brother went off to Africa in the Portuguese army a century ago and never returned, and his disappearance became an unsolved family mystery until recently.

The lady in Brazil saw the photo with the unusual spelling of Mendoza, where the Z is replaced by an NS, and was able to reach George and explain what happened to her grandfather. George is hoping she shows up for Saturday’s parade.

He has also received phone calls from people in mainland Portugal who have “just recently discovered” the photo.

Recognition of the photo’s lasting message has come from many sources, including a special issue U.S. stamp issued on the 50th anniversary of the end of World War II showing the kiss at Times Square fashioned after Eisenstadt’s photo. The photo and the historical facts surrounding it are enshrined in the museum of the Naval War College.

A life-size sculpture of the kissing scene made several years ago will be aboard the Raytheon float in Saturday’s parade.

Greta, George and Rita had a reunion in Times Square in 1980 courtesy of Life magazine, and a new photo was taken then, but Life has never officially acknowledged George’s or Greta’s authenticity. This treatment has rankled George and his friends for years.

Fortunately, Raytheon Corporation understands the symbolism of the great photo and will bring George and Greta to the fore in person this Saturday as part of the 224th celebration of American independence in Bristol.

Give them a good hand. They deserve it!