#Kilroy was here

[doggers05]

Great story!!!

Kilroy Was Here!

He’s engraved in stone in the National World War II Memorial in Washington, DC – back in a small alcove where very few people have seen it. For the WWII generation, this will bring back memories. For younger folks, it’s a bit of trivia that is an intrinsic part of American history and legend.

Anyone born between 1913 to about 1950, is very familiar with Kilroy. No one knew why he was so well known….but everybody seemed to get into it. It was the fad of its time!

          At the National World War II Memorial in Washington, DC

So who was Kilroy?

In 1946 the American Transit Association, through its radio program, “Speak to America,” sponsored a nationwide contest to find the real Kilroy….now a larger-than-life legend of just-ended World War II….offering a prize of a real trolley car to the person who could prove himself to be the genuine article.

Almost 40 men stepped forward to make that claim, but only James Kilroy from Halifax, Massachusetts, had credible and verifiable evidence of his identity.

“Kilroy” was a 46-year old shipyard worker during World War II (1941-1945) who worked as a quality assurance checker at the Fore River Shipyard in Quincy, Massachusetts (a major shipbuilder for the United States Navy for a century until the 1980s).  

His job was to go around and check on the number of rivets completed. (Rivets held ships together before the advent of modern welding techniques.) Riveters were on piece work wages….so they got paid by the rivet. He would count a block of rivets and put a check mark in semi-waxed lumber chalk (similar to crayon), so the rivets wouldn’t be counted more than once.

                                     A warship hull with rivets

When Kilroy went off duty, the riveters would surreptitiously erase the mark. Later, an off-shift inspector would come through and count the rivets a second time, resulting in double pay for the riveters!

One day Kilroy’s boss called him into his office. The foreman was upset about unusually high wages being “earned” by riveters, and asked him to investigate. It was then he realized what had been going on. 

The tight spaces he had to crawl in to check the rivets didn’t lend themselves to lugging around a paint can and brush, so Kilroy decided to stick with the waxy chalk. He continued to put his check mark on each job he inspected, but added ”KILROY WAS HERE!“ in king-sized letters next to the check….and eventually added the sketch of the guy with the long nose peering over the fence….and that became part of the Kilroy message.

   Kilroy’s original shipyard inspection “trademark” during World War II

Once he did that, the riveters stopped trying to wipe away his marks.

Ordinarily the rivets and chalk marks would have been covered up with paint. With World War II on in full swing, however, ships were leaving the Quincy Yard so fast that there wasn’t time to paint them. As a result, Kilroy’s inspection "trademark” was seen by thousands of servicemen who boarded the troopships the yard produced.

His message apparently rang a bell with the servicemen, because they picked it up and spread it all over the European and the Pacific war zones.

Before war’s end, “Kilroy” had been here, there, and everywhere on the long hauls to Berlin and Tokyo. 

To the troops outbound in those ships, however, he was a complete mystery; all they knew for sure was that someone named Kilroy had “been there first.” As a joke, U.S. servicemen began placing the graffiti wherever they landed, claiming it was already there when they arrived.

As World War II wore 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!

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 now be atop Mt. Everest, the Statue of Liberty, the underside of the Arc de Triomphe in Paris, and even scrawled in the dust on the moon by the American astronauts who walked there between 1969 and 1972.

In 1945, as World War II was ending, an outhouse was built for the exclusive use of Allied leaders Harry Truman, Joseph Stalin, and Winston Churchill at the Potsdam Conference. It’s 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 attached to the Kilroy home and used to provide living quarters for six of the family’s nine children….thereby solving what had become an acute housing crisis for the Kilroys.

                     The new addition to the Kilroy family home.

                                        *          *          *          *

And the tradition continues into the 21st century…

In 2011 outside the now-late-Osama Bin Laden’s hideaway house in Abbottabad, Pakistan….shortly after the al-Qaida-terrorist was killed by U.S. Navy SEALs. 

>>Note: The Kilroy graffiti on the southwest wall of the Bin Laden compound pictured above was real (not digitally altered with Microsoft Paint, as postulated by some). The entire compound was leveled in 2012 for redevelopment by a Pakistani company as an amusement park….and to avoid it becoming a shrine to Bin Laden’s nefarious memory.

                                         *          *          *          *

A personal note….

My Dad’s trademark signature on cards, letters and notes to my sisters and I for the first 50 or so years of our lives (until we lost him to cancer) was to add the image of “Kilroy" at the end. We kids never ceased to get a thrill out of this….even as we evolved into adulthood. 

To this day, the “Kilroy” image brings back a vivid image of my awesome Dad into my head….and my heart!

Dad: This one’s for you!

[just-get-through-the-storm]

What if I went back to Alabama to be a country boy?

What then?

huh?

[snack-at-midknight]

KILROY WAS HERE!

[secret-unburnt-guitars]

Hi i don't know much abt styx aside from general prog fandom osmosis but kwh has always intrigued me a little bit. Can you explain it in excruciating detail? (genuinely i'm not being sarcastic)

*cracks knuckles*

on february 22, 1983, styx released their eleventh studio album Kilroy Was Here. it was a concept album/rock opera though dennis deyoung likes to call it more of a "rock theatrical experience" in recent interviews. they even made a minifilm they played before the concert!!!! you can find it and the rest of caught in the act on youtube

it was made partially as a response to the rise of the satanic panic in the early-mid 1980s. people started to believe that rock music was evil and hiding satanic messages. the band was targeted by the public when they were accused in particular by the government of arkansas (i think?) of putting backwards messages (called backmasking) in their song Snowblind (the line "i try so hard to make it so" sounded like "satan moves through our voices" to some people. i own a copy of paradise theatre, that track in particular is damaged.).

and then dennis deyoung had a GREAT IDEA!!!!!!!!

imagine a big ol lightbulb flashing over him while the rest of the members of styx watch in mortal dread

so basically the album follows a sort of loose and vague backstory that's somehow still solid enough for people to follow some sort of a plot in their head (which is slightly backed up by Caught In The Act, the designated KWH "concert," which i'll get to in a second). the basic synopsis (paraphrased but still in excruciating detail) is as such:

set in a futuristic chicago(?) rock and roll has been made illegal under code 672 (prohibits the playing and purveying of rock music). Dr. Everett Righteous (played by JY), who was responsible for this, is the leader of the majority for musical morality or the MMM for short. the MMM is one of the strongest organizations in this universe since you know. they literally convinced congress to criminalize an entire genre of music for the entire country. righteous also hosts a television show where he encourages the public to burn guitars and records in a huge bonfire during “nightly rallies”. he also projects himself onto a big triangle over the skyline which i think is fucking hilarious i haven’t been able to get over it

Robert Orin Charles Kilroy (played by Dennis DeYoung, of course he's the title character), was a prolific rock musician at the time of the ban. he was thrown in prison for breaking the law and after being framed of murder. they accused him of bashing an MMM crusader's head in (which he obviously didn't do) after they raided one of his concerts at the paradise theatre. he then goes to rot in prison and is subjected to attempts of brainwashing by the dr. righteous show with the other “rock n’ roll misfits” they’ve arrested. it doesn’t work lol. i don't understand how it would work BECAUSE IT'S NEVER EXPLAINED

the prison kilroy is rotting in is maintained/monitored by japanese import, mass produced robots dubbed the "robotos," hence the title track. ignore how racist they look, it was 1983, this is not my fault

i mildly dislike them but it sucks how they’re essential to the plot ANYWAYS

here comes Jonathan Chance, (played by Tommy Shaw, albeit reluctantly) who is a rebel that is part of a underground resistance (that's only really mentioned once). with his friend, he breaks into some unknown area that is most likely a recording studio and hijacks the live television recording of the dr. righteous show. he proceeds to namedrop himself and then run off

credit to @mccoys-killer-queen for the gifs!!

kilroy sees this happen, which inspires him to attempt to escape the prison. kilroy incapacitates a roboto that visits his prison cell and disguises himself as it so he can escape without being noticed (i do not like the way he does this)

after kilroy escapes, he goes throughout the city and leaves messages for jonathan, leading him back to the paradise theater which is now the Dr. Righteous Museum for Rock Pathology

it's got a bunch of shitty animatronics that include people like jimi hendrix and elvis presley, but at the very back is an animatronic of kilroy repeatedly bashing in someone's head

this is my favorite part of the minifilm which i've basically explained sorry. you see like what you think is another roboto emerge from the shadows, and then it takes off its mask AND IT'S THE ACTUAL KILROY!!!

(this is taken from the live show, the transition is so goddamn dope)

and then dennis deyoung prances around and has his little pick me theater main character moment and sings mr. roboto and dances and stuff it looks so stupid. the live version of mr. roboto is way funnier than the official music video i don't know. i posted it about here before but i love this part in particular

so that's how kilroy and jonathan meet and that's basically the plot of one of styx's most popular songs!! sorry i gave kind of a play by play of the minifilm

now here's the fun part !!!! (unfinished lore/controversy)

unfortunately the reception of this album was less than satisfactory for most people back in '83, since KWH was way far away from the brand that styx had made for themselves in the 70s. they made art rock and prog, but this was just straight up synthpop. some people liked it though. i read somewhere in an article that it "alienated their male audience" and honestly if you're alienated by a little bit of gay pick me theater bs from your favorite band, that's a you problem

caught in the act was the designated "kilroy concert" that styx did sometime in 1983. the concert, however, doesn't give any. depth. to any additional explanations of multiple plot holes present in the story. as much as i love and cherish dennis deyoung he didn't do a very good job at writing this.

caught in the act felt more like a compromise than a show, seeing as the banter after the performance of mr. roboto was very bare? kilroy explains to jonathan that he was framed for murder, and then he goes in depth on the night it happened. "the crowd was totally psyched," he says, and then it goes to JY performing a guitar solo, which leads into the rest of the concert. the entire concert was portrayed as a flashback and gives no real backstory to any of the established characters. and then at the tail end of the concert they get "raided" by the MMM and you watch as an MMM officer murders one of righteous' own followers with kilroy's guitar. they cut back to kilroy and jonathan, they sing haven't we been before, and then kilroy hands jonathan this sick ass glowing guitar, then they perform the world's worst finale. the dance party ending of caught in the act. it sucks. it's horrible. i hate it. also there is no dennis deyoung in the kilroy was here universe lmfao

i'm still grateful for the concert though don't get me wrong!!! amazing concert

if the rest of styx didn't want to rip dennis deyoung apart for making them do this (i recently learned from a manager that DDY made them turn down an opportunity to perform at one of the largest concerts of the 80s, because he was like "but muh kilroy"), i believe songs off the album like High Time and Double Life would have been performed at Caught in the Act. both extremely lore-heavy songs, especially double life. i really wish they played double life. but c'est la vie, i guess.

literally everyone in the band hated dennis' guts so much while they were making this (justified, he was a stubborn asshole during production) but god was it worth it. for me at least. i imagine one of the conversations about production went like

JY: dennis have you considered that maybe this is a bad idea Dennis: i'm gonna make you the villain of the story if you don't shut the FUCK UP

i still think that JY had a little bit of fun though. he was hamming it tf up as dr. righteous i'm sorry you need to watch the mv's which you can find on youtube as well

but unfortunately tommy shaw wasn't having a good time at all, he literally quit on stage and stormed off and styx split for a while bc of this album i mean LOOK AT HIM HE'S SO PISSED OFF

overall this album is both cheese AND corn, worst album i've ever listened to, and yet it's given me a purpose in life. i've written 7,000+ words in one document about this album just to try and fill in the blanks the lore has, it's got so many. it's a running joke on this blog, i really hope you check out the album, because i think it's wonderful and it's endearing regardless of the controversy, it's too late for me. save yourself

[pluralsword]

little bit of personal stuff about us, 1st encounter with "Kilroy was here" in either in stuff about World War II or in Calvin & Hobbes when Calvin made a giant snowman one. Kids in school would draw Kilroys, & our maternal grandpa drew them for mom when she was young. Realized yesterday that the spelling of Aileron's name was perfect for doing a transformer equivalent and so naturally the first continuity we put "Aileroy was here" in was IDW2019 (we will be doing more). We chose this continuity both because of what the Autobots and Decepticons' opposed ideologies were and fought over, and because its nice to think that Greenlight or Arcee drew her because they knew her well, or that their mentee Gauge was thinking of her or she had become memetic among the Autobots in a good way. The issue the art we graffitied on is from IDW2's Transformers #40 btw, we will be doing more in other continuities and invite people to do this iteration of an over 80 years old meme themselves in other things!

AILEROY

WAS

HERE

[belovedastolove]

hello friends! here are some photos from my trip to the air show in my hometown!

these are photos from a B-29 :D

a couple more photos of WW2 era planes, sadly cannot remember what kind they are but one is japanese!

[devilroywashere]

Kilroy abducting (dead meme) Polish Cow 🐄

[oingussboinguss]

MORE KILROY FANART!! I love these homosexuals

[thegoblinwizard]

The image of Chetney sticking his head outta the hole in Laudna Land would not leave my head.

[souptomatobasil]

[idraw-sometimes]

Ok so for a project a while ago i had to study the history of graffiti and all that jazz and i got really into it, specifically one example called kilroy was here

Tell me why i was just scrolling and saw a screen shot of finn from adventure time's signiture and ITS FUCKING KILROY

IM GONNA SCREAM HOW DID I NOT NOTICE THIS??? KILROY WHAT ARE YOU DOING HERE??????

[mccoys-killer-queen]

fellas is it gay if some submissive and breedable twink inspires you to escape from prison, leaves you mysterious coded messages, and wants to meet you in secret while you plan to overthrow the government by serenading each other? asking for my friend Kilroy

[just-get-through-the-storm]

I give you puppies as a token of being awesome!

OH MY GOD PUPPIES?!?!? THIS IS THE BEST DAY OF MY LIFE!!!!!! I LOVE PUPPIES!!! And they look kinda like me tooooo!

Thank you so much, Tommy!!!! You’re super awesome!

[wolfmanritch]

little sketch comm of kilroy for @secret-unburnt-guitars 😈

[secret-unburnt-guitars]

The 1983 Kilroy Was Here Tour Program (...and its glaring issue)

There is in existence a tour program that was made to promote KWH. Printed in 1983, (when else would it be?) the program most likely was distributed at the concert itself.

I first found it on eBay, and god, did it piss me off when I read it.

For the most part, it does a decent job at bringing the reader and/or audience member up to speed with the plot behind... whatever they're about to witness. Feasible design work too, good photos, just a little large in my opinion, but who am I to complain?

(Sorry if the quality's low, my scanner stopped working so this is from my phone camera.)

The program is supposed to be in-universe, explaining the "recent events" that have occurred, including things like Dr. Righteous' rise to power, Jonathan's hijacking, and Kilroy's escape. It touches on specifics such as Kilroy only serving five years of his life sentence among other things such as excerpts from faux articles about Hyde and Vanish being hired to be Righteous' official cronies.

The very large problem here (plain to see) is the members' biographies. "Oh but Rosie I don't see what's wrong with it, it's just some corny way of listing off the members while staying in character it's not that important" I'm going to be honest with you. I am looking you directly in the eye now. First of all, hang on for a moment. I'll explain. Second, no, it's not important. Not to you, maybe, but have you ever had a rock in your shoe while you walk and every time you take a step you feel that rock stab directly into your pinky toe, and when you finally get a chance to take off your shoe, you realize somehow it's in your fucking sock, so you have to go through all the trouble of sitting down, taking off your sock, shaking out that stupid rock that turned out to be probably the tiniest pebble you've ever seen in your entire life, putting on your sock again, and spending 2 minutes re-lacing your shoe because you decided to wear Converse that day like a bumbling moron, wondering how in the hell that rock even managed to make it in? That's what this feels like to me. This has been bugging me for almost a year. It's never going to stop bugging me.

Sorry, anyway, if you've watched Caught In the Act, you would know that the entire concert takes place within Kilroy's flashback. To recap a previous post: after the minifilm was displayed and Mr. Roboto was... performed, the show briefly transitions into a scripted banter between Kilroy and Jonathan. Jonathan asks if Kilroy was actually responsible for the death at the show, in which Kilroy reveals that he was framed by "that son of a bitch Righteous" and proceeds to explain how the fateful night at the Paradise truly went.

"The crowd was so psyched. There was so much tension and excitement," he says. "But when JY started the show in his guitar solo, the place went wild!"

This goes into a full-length concert. A full-length concert, in fact, with each existing member of Styx at the time. The actual Tommy Shaw, James Young, and Chuck and John Panozzo were all there and playing their guitars and drums and bass and whatnot under the name Kilroy. Narcissistic much? Not to fear. Dennis DeYoung unintentionally erased himself from this story, as the show was Kilroy's flashback. Obviously, this means they very much exist within KWH as themselves and at roughly the same time as their fictional counterparts. There is absolutely no way that any of them would be the same person, inevitably creating four sets of doppelgängers that scamper around Chicago.

Now the thing that makes me want to scream as loud as I can at 5 AM:

As shown above, each bio lists the members' names and their 'aliases' as the characters they play. Again, you would probably think "oh that's probably not to be interpreted the way you are right now," in which I would curtly remind you about the rock in your shoe. Look at JY's. Really look at it.

"Reformed guitarist." Who the fuck reformed him?????? Hyde and Vanish I can somewhat understand, but Righteous is the founder and leader of the Majority for Musical Morality. I'm speaking completely within the officially established canon here and I'm not referencing any of my own fanlore. You go "oh well maybe someone else reformed him and then he became Dr. Righteous" What's in your shoe right now? Huh? Do you want to tell me what's in your shoe right now? Righteous is at the very top, who would reform him??? He's been like this from the beginning. JY couldn't have been reformed, because he was at the concert playing the guitar when the band gets raided by the MMM. The existence of the organization AND Code 672 confirms the simultaneous existence of Righteous. They're two different people who coincidentally look the same.

I want to focus on Jonathan real quick too because I think this is the second-most blatant out of all of them, right behind JY.

At the tail-end of their concert after the raid, that one nerdy guy from the Heavy Metal Poisoning number gets killed off. This ends the flashback and brings us back to the present and especially back to Jonathan, who most definitely did not know about any of that and sings a little song. When he gets that weird glowing guitar in the finale it is made absolutely clear that Jonathan Chance does not know how to play, thus separating Jonathan from Tommy. (On a side note, this means that the person that raided the Dr. Righteous Show in the HMP music video was probably Tommy. Good on him.)

This physically hurts me to think about but I try and keep my peace by reminding myself that there's nothing I can do about this. I wouldn't have much of a problem with this if it wasn't actually (albeit unintentionally) canon.

This isn't a plot hole, this is a plot trench. I can't keep my peace. This is hell on Earth. Save me.

[pluralsword]

"Aileroy was here" continues :3