Viral fads existed long before the internet, and history has no shortage of viral moments. One of the more memorable was the Second World War’s ‘KILROY WAS HERE’ meme. Wherever American servicemen passed through, graffiti was bound to appear, stating that Kilroy had been there. As seen below, it was often accompanied by a cartoon of a long-nosed man, poking his head over a fence.
The Biggest Meme of the Second World War
On occasion nowadays, graffiti of a long-nosed bald guy peeping over a wall pops up on buildings, often with the caption “KILROY WAS HERE”. It’s a modern homage to a 1940s viral meme that swept the planet in World War II, and appeared wherever GIs appeared. It became a kind of competition for American servicemen to try and tag the most obscure, out of the way, and unlikely locations with the picture and text that Kilroy had been there. He had apparently been everywhere.
The phrase and drawing were seen in bathrooms, barracks, cafeterias, tents, Navy ship holds, the ruins of wrecked buildings, carved on tree trunks, and just about any surface that could get painted or chalked. The meme went so viral that it reportedly even preceded the arrival of American servicemen. GIs who stormed enemy beaches claimed to have seen notices that Kilroy had been there ahead of them.
The doodle mystified Japanese intelligence. The rumor mill had it that even Hitler wondered what the deal was with Kilroy, and whether it was code for some dangerous Allied espionage operation. At the Potsdam Conference after Germany’s surrender, Stalin saw the meme tagged in the VIP bathroom, and asked who he was.
Unsurprisingly, there was significant curiosity about just how the whole thing had started. Soon after the end of WWII, the American Transit Association ran a contest to track down just how the meme had started. Dozens of candidates stepped forward, to claim that they had originated the viral phrase and doodle. Over the years, there has been plenty of research and historic sleuthing.
Just Who Was the Man Behind the Meme?
The most credible theory traces the ‘KILROY WAS HERE’ meme to James J. Kilroy, an inspector at the Fore River Shipyard in Braintree, Massachusetts. As an inspector, he oversaw the work of riveters, who were paid by how many rivets they had installed. After they noted down the number of rivets, inspectors usually put a chalk mark on the work done.
However, some unscrupulous riveters erased the mark, in order to get paid twice for the same work. So he began to write “Kilroy was here” in harder-to-erase crayon. Kilroy’s crayon mark would normally have been painted over, but in the mad rush of WWII, such niceties were often ignored.
As a result, thousands of GIs saw “Kilroy was here” written in crayon on the surface of ships built at Fore River Shipyard. They had no clue who Kilroy was, and from that minor mystery, a viral meme was born. Especially hard to reach ship locations were the likeliest to go unpainted, and the presence of the phrase in those inaccessible spots enhanced Kilroy’s reputation for getting into impossible-to-reach places.
Once they disembarked, many GIs continued the gag about the mysterious Kilroy, ran with it, and tagged every available surface to let the world know that he had been there. At some point, somebody added an easy-to-imitate drawing of a big-nosed cartoon character to the gag. That combination of phrase and doodle took Kilroy from a widespread meme to major viral history.
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Some Sources & Further Reading
America Comes Alive – “Kilroy Was Here”: A Story From WWII
History Halls – Fashion History: 1970s Fish Tank Shoes
Live Science – How “Kilroy Was Here” Changed the World
Sickles, Robert and Robert J. – The 1940s (2004)
ThoughtCo. – The Story Behind the Phrase ‘Kilroy Was Here’
