Kilroy was Here!

During the extensive research for my 1982 Harper & Row book 'The World War II Quiz & Fact Book,' I read and culled no less than 217 books for thousands of amazing facts, interesting information, little-known anecdotes and vignettes, superlatives and coincidences.

One such item was the origin of the graffiti Kilroy Was Here, which was eventually seen in every theater of the Second World War (and later during the Korean War).

Kilroy Was Here? Who was Kilroy, and what did it mean? Herewith is what I discovered and now share with you:

James J. Kilroy, a rivet inspection checker at the Fore River Shipyard in Quincy, Massachusetts, wrote the legend next to work he inspected rather than making a simple, small check mark that piece workers could easily erase and thereby hope to have counted twice. During the 'war effort' rush to produce as much equipment as possible in the shortest amount of time, no effort was made to remove such chalk marks.

As a result, numerous U.S. Navy combat and troop ships departed the yard with the words Kilroy Was Here which would become an almost cult slogan throughout the war. U.S. servicemen, amused by the strange legend, began writing, scratching, painting, and carving Kilroy Was Here on thousands of buildings, monuments, vehicles, toilet walls, and just about every other service they came in contact with.

Somewhere along the way, a drawn likeness of a little man with his bulbous nose hanging over a fence he was clutching on to was added. By the end of the war Kilroy Was Here, with or without the drawing, could be found anywhere U.S. troops were or had been. However, there is good reason to believe that the little drawing added to Kilroy Was Here, had actually been created by a cartoonist/artist in England before the war.