Historical Trivia


For the WWII generation, this will bring back memories. For you younger folks, it’s a bit of trivia that is a part of our history. Anyone born in the teens, twenties, and mid-thirties, is familiar with Kilroy. We didn’t know why, but we had lapel pins with his nose hanging over the label and the top of his face above his nose with his hands hanging over the label too. I believe it was orange colored. No one knew why he was so well known, but we all joined in! Note that ship building was occurring so fast, that the vessels went out unpainted. Probably figured they would last the duration and be mothballed or cut up for scrap after the war, so why paint them.





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 l’Arc De Triomphe, and even scrawled in the dust on the moon). 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 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. Its’ first occupant 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 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!

Kilroy was Here