When I was a kid, graffiti was found in a lot of places — admittedly, not nearly as many as today. Back then, if you ran across a dirty word, or phrase, the reaction was shock or a giggle (depending on how bad it was.) The graffiti found on bathroom walls was, by and large, pretty clever — not vulgar. One piece of graffiti that popped up just about everywhere was the drawing (at the right) with the words, “Kilroy was here.” Everyone thought it was funny, but no one knew its meaning, if in fact it did mean something.
Even though “Kilroy was here” popped up all over the world, its origin pretty much remained a mystery. A few years ago, I ran across an article that seemingly explained the mystery of Kilroy’s origin. It’s a little long, but it’s interesting…. In 1946, the American Transit Association (ATA) held a radio contest to establish the origin of the phrase. Lots of people obviously claimed to be the originator, but one those was James J. Kilroy, who worked at the Bethlehem Steel shipyard in Quincy, Massachusetts during the war inspecting the work done by others on the tanks and hulls of warships. Here’s his story:
“I started my new job with enthusiasm, carefully surveying every inner bottom and tank before issuing a contract. I was thoroughly upset to find that practically every test leader (the head of a work crew) I met wanted me to go down and look over his job with him, and when I explained that I had already checked the job and could not spare the time to crawl through one of those tanks again, they would accuse me of not having looked the job over. I was getting sick of being accused of not looking the jobs over and one day as I came through the manhole of a tank I had just surveyed, I angrily marked, with yellow crayon, on the tank top, where the tester could see it, ‘Kilroy was here.’ The following day, a test gang leader approached me with a grin on his face and said, ‘I see you looked my job over.’ I nodded in agreement.”
Kilroy provided the ATA with corroborating statements from men he worked with at the shipyard, and Kilroy said that he assumed that the shipyard workers who had seen his mark and then joined the military took the phrase with them and began writing it overseas. He won the contest. A lot of things go viral today via social media but maybe not so widespread and long lasting as ‘Kilroy.’
Until James Kilroy won the contest, no one was sure of its origin — or — purpose. It not only mystified, but it alarmed our enemies during World War II. Japanese troops were so mystified by a “Kilroy was here” painted on a bombed out tank on the Pacific island of Guadalcanal that they reported the find to their senior intelligence officers. Some reports indicate that Hitler supposed that Kilroy was some kind of “Super-GI” or spy, and ordered a contingent of men to track down the sneaky American. Of course, he was never found.
So next time you’re reading graffiti on a bathroom wall, no matter how vulgar, enlightening, or clever it may be, just think of Kilroy — he may not be here, but he was….
— 30 —