Shain with the statue in Times Square. (AFP)

New York, Aug. 12 (Reuters): This kiss has indeed lingered.

The woman in an iconic photograph of an American sailor rapturously kissing a nurse during a V-J Day parade unveiled a sculpture of the clinch on yesterday, saying she still doesn’t know who kissed her 60 years ago.

Taken in Times Square and entitled “V-J Day,” the picture by Life magazine photographer Alfred Eisenstadt came to symbolise the euphoria as crowds celebrated the Allied victory in Japan at the end of World War II on August 14, 1945.

“The guy grabbed me, I closed my eyes and after he left me alone, I walked away,” said Edith Shain, a petite and still-spry woman who just turned 87.

“Of course I let him kiss me because he had been in the war and he had fought for me so I was real happy to do what I could,” she said, standing next to the sculpture that will be in a Times Square traffic island until August 14. “I wasn’t shocked because everyone was being kissed, and why not? It was a great day.”

The aluminum sculpture, which is slightly larger-than-life and painted in life-like colours, was made by artist J. Seward Johnson, who gave it the title “Unconditional Surrender.” After August 14 it will find a home in a gallery.

Shain was a 27-year-old nurse at the time and she later became a school teacher in California where she married and had three children.

Various men have claimed to be the man in the photo, but she says it is impossible to know who it was for sure.