George Mendonsa, who made the most credible claim to being the sailor shown kissing a woman in Times Square after the end of World War II in a photograph that became a national emblem of elation, died on Sunday in Middletown, R.I. He was 95.

He died at a nursing home after a seizure, said Lawrence Verria, who with George Galdorisi wrote “The Kissing Sailor: The Mystery Behind the Photo That Ended World War II” (2012).

The illustrious Life magazine photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt took the photograph on Aug. 14, 1945, moments after word reached the public that the Japanese had surrendered. Times Square was thronged with people celebrating the end of the war, and Eisenstaedt’s series of four photos showed a uniformed sailor grabbing a woman in a nurse’s outfit, bending her back and kissing her deeply. These two anonymous people appeared to embody the exuberance of the moment, and the photograph appeared on a full page in Life.

Eisenstaedt did not record the names of the impromptu kissers; their identities have been debated for decades. Three women have made tenable claims that each was the woman in the photo; many people who have studied the matter believe that she was most likely Greta Friedman.