After World War 2 - I seen the fraze" Kilroy Was Here" written all over the place?

Question

Why was that and who was Kilroy?

Answer 1

The phrase appears to have originated through United States servicemen, who would draw the doodle and the text "Kilroy Was Here" on the walls or elsewhere they were stationed, encamped, or visited. Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable notes that it was particularly associated with the Air Transport Command, at least when observed in the United Kingdom.

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.

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?

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."

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 "Wot (What), no _____?" underneath, as a satirical comment on shortages and rationing.

Answer 2

This is from http://www.kilroywashere.org. As you can see it's legend number 5. The site has all the information you could need right there. It seems there are many stories concerning who Kilroy really was. This is just one of them.

Legend #5 Here is one story that I heard and think that it sounds very logical. During WWII we were turning out Liberty ships very fast and of course they all had to be inspected. Plumbing inspections, electrical inspections, etc, etc. There was one inspector named Mr. Kilroy working in a shipyard in Boston. Upon completion of his inspection tour, if the proper people and papers were not there for him to sign he would just scrawl on the bulkhead "Kilroy was here" And then move on to his next inspection. That was the sign that he was there, inspected and passed the ship. Most of the ships were built so fast that not all surfaces had time to be painted and thousands of soldiers saw his little notes on the bulkheads. That's how "Kilroy was here" got it's start. If not, at least it is a good story.

Answer 3

There wasn't a person named Kilroy. It was a graffiti saying (sometimes with an easy-to-draw cartoon with a GI helmet on top of part of a head, a couple of eyes, and a nose that stuck over a line representing a wall or fence). It started to appear in Europe when American troops moved forward after D-Day and continued for a year or two, till after the European war was over. I always heard of it in Europe and not in the Pacific Theater, but I may be wrong.

Answer 4

he was a welding inspector on ship building projects. i suppose most of the ships he was working on were war ships hence the relation to ww2. he would write or sign his logo kilroy was here with that little pic . that ment that the weld was ok and the next bit of work could continue on with the area.
that is who kilroy was and i i suppose if he worked in a large ship yard he might have worked for 30 years or more say 25 of them as a weld inspector so that is alot of writting his name.
i looked this up a long time ago and i live a town where ships were built and they new of him and his writting as well here so i suppose he just got to be kind of famous among the ship builders or burners welders were called burners back then and so the legend grew.

Answer 5

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kilroy_was_here