Kilroy was here
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- This article is about the popular culture expression. For the Styx album, see Kilroy Was Here (album).
Kilroy was here is an American popular culture expression, often seen in graffiti. Its origins are indistinct, but recognition of it and the distinctive doodle of "Kilroy" peeking over a wall is almost ubiquitous among U.S. residents who lived during World War II.
The same doodle also appears in other cultures, but the character peeping over the wall is not named Kilroy but Foo. Australian children often write "Foo was here" under the illustration, a habit possibly inherited from the United Kingdom, where such graffiti are known as "chads". In Chile, the graphic is known as a "sapo" [frog] this may refer to the character's peeping, a habit associated with frogs due to their protruding eyes.
Explanations of origin
The phrase appears to have originated through World War II United States servicemen, who would draw the doodle and the text "Kilroy Was Here" on the walls or elsewhere they were stationed, encamped, etc. Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable notes that it was particularly associated with the Air Transport Command, at least when observed in the UK.While the origins of the slogan are obscure, those of the cartoon are less so. It almost certainly originated as "Chad", in the UK before the war; a creation of the cartoonist George Edward Chatterton. Presumably, the two merged together during the 1940s, with the vast influx of Americans into Britain. The "Chad" cartoon was very popular, being found across the UK with the slogan "What, no …?" or "Wot, no …?" underneath, as a satirical comment on shortages and rationing. (One sighting, on the side of a British 1st Airborne Division glider in Operation Market Garden, had the plaintive complaint "Wot, no engines?")
One theory identifies James J. Kilroy, an American shipyard inspector, as the man behind the signature. During World War II he worked at the Bethlehem Steel Shipyard in Quincy, Massachusetts, where he claimed to have used the phrase to mark rivets he had checked. The builders, whose rivets J. J. Kilroy was counting, were paid depending on the number of rivets they put in. They found that they could erase the chalk marks J. J. Kilroy made and get paid double. J.J. Kilroy decided to use a yellow crayon, which was harder to erase; the cheating stopped. At the time, ships were being sent out before they had been painted, so when sealed areas were opened for maintenance, soldiers found an unexplained name scrawled. Thousands of servicemen may have potentially seen his slogan on the outgoing ships and Kilroy's omnipresence and inscrutability sparked the legend. Afterwards, servicemen could have begun placing the slogan on different places and especially in new captured areas or landings. At some later point, the graffiti (Chad) and slogan (Kilroy was here) must have merged.(Michael Quinion. 3 April 1999.[link])
Author Charles Panati says, “The mischievous face and the phrase became a national joke”. He continued to say, "The outrageousness of the graffiti was not so much what it said, but where it turned up."
Kilroy was the most popular of his type in World War II, as well as today. Clem (Canadian), Overby (Los Angeles- late 1960s), Chad (British- WW II), and Mr. Foo (British- WW II) never reached the popularity Kilroy did. The ‘major’ Kilroy graffito fad ended in the 1950s, but today people all over the world scribble ‘Kilroy was here’ in schools, trains, and other similar public areas.
The New York Times reported this as the origin in 1946, with the addition that Kilroy had marked the ships themselves as they were being built — so, at a later date, the phrase would be found chalked in places that no graffiti-artist could have reached (inside sealed hull spaces, for example), which then fed the mythical significance of the phrase — after all, if Kilroy could leave his mark there, who knew what else he could do?
Legends
There are many legends attached to the Kilroy graffiti. One states that Hitler himself believed that Kilroy was some kind of American super spy because the graffiti kept turning up in secure Nazi installations, presumably having been actually brought on captured Allied military equipment. Another states that Stalin was the first to enter an outhouse especially built for the leaders at the Potsdam conference. Upon exiting, Stalin asked an aide, "Who is this Kilroy?" Another legend states that a German officer, having seen frequent "Kilroys" posted in different cities, told all of his men that if they happened to come across a "Kilroy" he wanted to question him personally.
The graffiti is supposedly located on various significant and/or difficult-to-reach places such as on the torch of the Statue of Liberty, on the Marco Polo Bridge in China, in huts in Polynesia, on a high girder on the George Washington Bridge in New York, at the peak of Mt. Everest, on the underside of the Arc de Triomphe, scribbled in the dust on the moon, inside a restricted outhouse at the Potsdam conference, in WWII pillboxes scattered around Germany, around the sewers of Paris, and, in tribute to its origin, in the WWII Memorial in Washington D.C.
The Transit Company of America held a competition in 1946 offering a real trolley car to the man who could verify he was the "real Kilroy". J. J. Kilroy brought his co-workers with him to prove that he was undeniably the true Kilroy. The other forty or so men who showed up were not able to establish they were the "real" Kilroy. Kilroy gave his prize to his nine children to play with in their front yard.
Kilroy in popular culture
- Isaac Asimov published a fictional short story entitled "The Message" (1955) which is the story of a thirtieth-century historian named George Kilroy who travels back in time to witness historic events. It is while witnessing the first allied beach assault landings of World War II in Africa that Kilroy first leaves his mark, scratched into a shack on the beach. This short story may be found in Asimov's short story collections Earth Is Room Enough or The Complete Stories Volume 1.
- The Asimov-edited anthology 100 Great Science Fiction Short Short Stories contains a piece by author Paul Bond entitled The Mars Stone in which human explorers on Mars find a cryptic message etched into a stone wall which is decoded to read KILROY WAS HERE.
- The novel V. by Thomas Pynchon claims that Kilroy was originally part of a schematic for a band-pass filter.
- In one Calvin and Hobbes strip, Calvin builds a giant half-head and fingers out of snow on the crest of a hill; seen from the right angle, it looks like a giant Kilroy peeking over the hilltop.
- When the Italian comic strip Amok was first published in Sweden, its title was changed to Kilroy due to the popularity of the phrase even in Sweden. The first issue of the comic magazine Serie-Magasinet published in 1948 proudly boasted "Kilroy är här!" ("Kilroy is here!") on the cover.
- Kilroy is mentioned in Closing Time, the sequel to Catch-22, by Joseph Heller inside the bomb shelter.
- Peter Viereck's poem "KILROY" [link]
- The Kilroy cartoon appears in the bank at the end of Kelly's Heroes. Instead of "Kilroy was here" the message is: "Up Yours".
- The rock group Styx's 1983 rock opera/concept album was entitled Kilroy Was Here.
- Kilroy appears on the side of Jerry Seinfeld's refrigerator in the first episode of the show Seinfeld.
- Kilroy is here appears on a military truck in Patton, a biographical film about General George Patton.
- The Kilroy Was Here graffiti with Kilroy peeking over is provided as a 'spray' in the popular first-person shooter
- There is a musical about a private Kilroy, who happens to also be a secret agent for the O.S.S. during W.W.II.
- In the serial novel [Implementation] one of the main characters is a soldier named Kilroy
- In the Podiobook 7th Son, a computer hacker who claims to be everywhere and be able to find out anything calls himself Kilroy 2.0
- In the first level of Return to Castle Wolfenstein, a popular first-person shooter game for PC, a picture of Kilroy is on the wall of the player's cell.
- "Kilroy Was Here" is briefly mentioned written on the moon in the 1948 Warner Bros. cartoon "Haredevil Hare" with Bugs Bunny and Marvin the Martian.
- Kilroy Was Here was the name of a song by the band The Move on their self-titled debut album. From the lyrics: "Kilroy was here/Left his name around the place/Kilroy was here/Though I've never seen his face"
- In the Podiobook EarthCore by Scott Sigler one of the characters leaves signs with "Kilroy was here." all over the underground caverns.
Alternate Interpretations
The People's Almanac, by David Wallechinsky and Irving Wallace (1975) suggests an alternate interpretation of Kilroy:- A Freudian Kilroy theory hypothesizes that Kilroy is a modern version of the ancient Oedipal legend. Kilroy, according to this theory, actually means "kill roi" (roi is the French word for king); king and father are identical, so Kilroy is an expression of the Oedipal urge to kill one's father. The accompanying urge to marry one's mother is symbolized by Kilroy's appearance in inaccessible, taboo places.
External links
- [The Legends of "Kilroy Was Here"]
- [The Straight Dope: "What's the origin of 'Kilroy was here'?"]
- [Badfads: "Kilroy was here!"]
- [Kilroy/Chad Explained]
- [Kilroy was here!]. Mick Power, Eric Lindstrom, Dennis McKniff and ‘Unknown’, 12/26/01.
- [Kilroy Challenge Coin]
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