Kilroy Was Here

[Emery]

KILROY WAS HERE!

In 1946 the American Transit Association, through its radio program, "Speak
to America," sponsored a nationwide contest to find the REAL Kilroy,
offering a prize of a real trolley car to the person who could prove himself
to be the genuine article.

Almost 40 men stepped forward to make that claim, but only James Kilroy
from Halifax, Massachusetts had evidence of his identity.

Kilroy was a 46-year old shipyard worker during the war. He worked as a
checker at the Fore River Shipyard in Quincy. His job was to go around and
check on the number of rivets completed. Riveters were on piecework and got
paid by the rivet.

Kilroy would count a block of rivets and put a check mark in semi-waxed
lumber chalk, so the rivets wouldn't be counted twice. When Kilroy went off
duty, the riveters would erase the mark.

Later on, an off-shift inspector would come through and count the rivets a
second time, resulting in double pay for the riveters.

One day Kilroy's boss called him into his office. The foreman was upset
about all the wages being paid to riveters, and asked him to investigate. It
was then that he realized what had been going on.

The tight spaces he had to crawl in to check the rivets didn't lend
themselves to lugging around a paint can and brush, so Kilroy decided to
stick with the waxy chalk. He continued to put his checkmark on each job he
inspected, but added KILROY WAS HERE in king-sized letters next to the
check, and eventually added the sketch of the chap with the long nose
peering over the fence and that became part of the Kilroy message. Once he
did that, the riveters stopped trying to wipe away his marks.

Ordinarily the rivets and chalk marks would have been covered up with paint.
With war on, however, ships were leaving the Quincy Yard so fast that there
wasn't time to paint them.

As a result, Kilroy's inspection "trademark" was seen by thousands of
servicemen who boarded the troopships the yard produced. His message
apparently rang a bell with the servicemen, because they picked it up and
spread it all over Europe and the South Pacific. Before the war's end,
"Kilroy" had been here, there, and everywhere on the long haul to Berlin and
Tokyo.

To the unfortunate troops outbound in those ships, however, he was a
complete mystery; all they knew for sure was that some jerk named Kilroy had
"been there first." As a joke, U.S. servicemen began placing the graffiti
wherever they landed, claiming it was already there when they arrived.

Kilroy became the U.S. super-GI who had always "already been" wherever GIs
went. It became a challenge to place the logo in the most unlikely places
imaginable (it is said to be atop Mt. Everest, the Statue of Liberty, the
underside of the Arch De Triumphe, and even scrawled in the dust on the
moon.)

And as the war went on, the legend grew. Underwater demolition teams
routinely sneaked ashore on Japanese-held islands in the Pacific to map the
terrain for the coming invasions by U.S. troops (and thus, presumably, were
the first GI's there). On one occasion, however, they reported seeing enemy
troops painting over the Kilroy logo! In 1945, an outhouse was built for the
exclusive use of Roosevelt, Stalin, and
Churchill at the Potsdam conference.

The first person inside was Stalin, who emerged and asked his aide (in
Russian), "Who is Kilroy?" ..

To help prove his authenticity in 1946, James Kilroy brought along officials
from the shipyard and some of the riveters. He won the trolley car, which he
gave it to his nine children as a Christmas gift and set it up as a
playhouse in the Kilroy front yard in Halifax, Massachusetts.


So now You Know

[beagle crazy]

Thanks for the history lesson Emery. My dad was a WWII vet but NEVER talked about it: if you brought up the subject of war, Dad left the room. I always figured he must have been through some pretty bad stuff, so I never pushed the issue. Now that he's gone, I like to find out about some things he must have been through. I've always been proud of my Dad and his service to our country but learning more about what really happened rather than just what got printed in the history books make me even prouder. Thanks again for sharing what you know. I appreciate your willingness to share your knowledge.

[Emery]

I found this on a military website, I don't know for sure if it is authentic or not. I can't find anything about Kilroy on Snopes and have e-mailed them what is posted above. It seems to make sense, and I can see all the things happening as they are written (being an ex-sailor) so I thought I would share it. And if I find out otherwise, I will post again. None the less, it is a good read.

Emery

[Emery]

http://www.snopes.com:80/language/phrases/kilroy.asp