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8 2 • s m i t h s o n i a n c o n t r i b u t i o n s t o h i s t o ry a n d t e c h n o l o g yFigure 1. Cover of letter condemned and held by U.S. Army postal censors. Courtesy National Archives,College Park, Md.Although the primary purpose of postal censorship wasto prevent strategic information from falling into enemyhands, censoring soldiers’ letters was also a method of intelligencegathering (Figure 1). Reviewing soldiers’ lettersprovided military officials with information about militarymorale and behavior. Censorship reports documentedwidespread attitudes, common complaints, and incidentsof misconduct. These documents are, perhaps, even morevaluable to historians than they were to the U. S. Army,for they provide scholars with access to thoughts and actionsthat are otherwise un- or underreported.Documenting Wartime AttitudesIn overseas theaters of operations, censorship responsibilitiesassigned to intelligence personnel included: trainingunit officers to censor the outgoing correspondence ofenlisted men and women under their command; reviewinga percentage of already censored correspondence; censoringpreviously uncensored correspondence; inspectingpackages and travelers’ personal effects; reporting and analyzingcensorship violations; and issuing monthly or bimonthlyreports on troop morale 4 (Figure 2). Of particularinterest to historians are morale reports and the commentsheets used to record censorship violations.Censorship morale reports preserve soldiers’ thoughtson such topics as Army food, mail service, military leaders,furlough and rotation policies, entertainment facilities,race relations, servicewomen, popular rumors, andenemy propaganda. The staff of the Office of the TheaterCensor transcribed passages from soldiers’ letters, identifyingthe correspondent not by name but by rank, militaryunit, and Army Post Office (APO). Comments andcomplaints reproduced in these reports were intendedto reflect the soldiers’ collective state of mind; they representa range of opinion with an emphasis on the mostcommonly voiced ones. Censors classified comments aseither favorable or unfavorable and noted changes in thevolume of correspondence on a particular topic. Thoughcrude, this method of analysis allowed military officials—and now allows scholars—to track shifts in soldiers’ attitudesand concerns over the course of the war. Perhapsnot surprising, censorship reports from the Pacific revealthat between November 1944 and war’s end, servicemen’sopinion of the Waacs who arrived in the theater in latesummer 1944 steadily improved as the men became betteracquainted with female soldiers. By contrast, soldiers’attitudes about “home affairs”—a broad category that included“political and economic situations, postwar plans,social and personal problems”—was harder to chart.Anger about strikes in defense factories, on the one hand,
n u m b e r 5 5 • 8 3Figure 2. Cover illustration from the U.S. Army’s “Censorship Guide” for the Pacific Theater of Operations.Courtesy National Archives, College Park, Md.and interest in the provisions of the GI Bill of Rights, onthe other, produced fluctuations in soldiers’ interest in andattitudes toward news from the home front. 6Evidence of MisconductCensorship reports record not only popular opinionbut also common violations of military law. Under the category“the enemy,” for example, European theater moralereports examined “fraternization,” or friendly relationsbetween American servicemen and German civilians (typicallyyoung women) during combat and in the months betweenVE- Day and the Japanese surrender. Although somesoldiers disapproved of such relationships, morale reportsreveal that many other men were eager to explore newsexual opportunities. Despite the threat of imprisonmentand steep fines, some even bragged about their conquestsin letters home. One sergeant wrote, probably to a fellowsoldier:You should see my girl over here too, she sure is ahoney. She is only 21 and she said she is sure shewill like the U.S. when we are married and I takeher back with me. As tho, after seeing these Naziskill our boys off, I would be crazy enough to takeher back with me even if I were not married. Allthe boys have German girls now and they sureare good. They will make good wives for the Germanboys after we leave them. They will be a lotsmarter too.The same morale report that reproduced the above passagealso provides evidence of the mistreatment of Germanprisoners of war and of the looting and damaging ofGerman homes by American soldiers. Both behaviors wereviolations of the Army’s rules of land warfare. 7Pacific theater comment sheets and other censorshipdocuments reveal that desecration of enemy dead was disturbinglywidespread. In a letter to his mother, one younginfantry lieutenant bragged:
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Smithsonian InstitutionScholarly Pr
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smithsonian contributions to histor
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ContentsLETTER FROM THE DIRECTOR OF
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AcknowledgmentsThe symposium would
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2 • s m i t h s o n i a n c o n t
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1 0 • s m i t h s o n i a n c o n
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1 2 • s m i t h s o n i a n c o n
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“Little Colored Bits of Paper”C
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n u m b e r 5 5 • 1 7as something
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n u m b e r 5 5 • 1 9protest came
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n u m b e r 5 5 • 2 1nals I revie
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WWI Philatelic Censuses of East Afr
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n u m b e r 5 5 • 2 5Table 1. GEA
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n u m b e r 5 5 • 2 7Figure 5. MA
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Explorations in the Official Regist
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Page 47: Introduction to the Second Symposiu
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Page 59 and 60: “Food Will Win the War”: Motor
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Page 81 and 82: Picking Up the Pieces: The Aftermat
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Page 101: Introduction to the Fourth Symposiu
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Page 131 and 132: “Why Is a Raven Like a Writing De
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n u m b e r 5 5 • 1 3 3Figure 3.
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n u m b e r 5 5 • 1 3 5The glazed
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n u m b e r 5 5 • 1 3 7Intercity
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n u m b e r 5 5 • 1 3 9The End of
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The U.S. 1847 Issue:Stamps That Cha
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n u m b e r 5 5 • 1 4 3the positi
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n u m b e r 5 5 • 1 4 5stamps as
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From the Pulpit to the Post: Anti-
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n u m b e r 5 5 • 1 4 9The allege
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n u m b e r 5 5 • 1 5 1Individual
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n u m b e r 5 5 • 1 5 337. Archiv
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