Now You See It, Now You Don't!

TellZall's object for July is V-Mail.

V, or Victory mail, was a valuable tool for the military during World War II

Today, when we send messages to American soldiers overseas, we have a variety of methods to choose from.  Troops have the ability to occasionally telephone their families back in the United States, and email has made it possible to for families to remain connected even on a daily basis.  We send letters and care packages to the soldiers as well.  Technology has made it possible to keep in contact with troops overseas much more easily, and those messages travel back and forth at a rapid pace. 

Historically, it has been much more difficult for families to correspond with their loved ones serving overseas during wartime.  Letters often took a long time to arrive at their destination, and mail going overseas had to travel by ship, not by air.  Mail for the troops took up valuable space on board ships that was needed for supplies for the war effort.  During World War II, some governments found a solution to that problem, known as V-Mail.  V-Mail was the abbreviation for Victory Mail.  Families wrote letters on specially sized and designed sheets of paper, which were then microfilmed.

The microfilmed letters traveled by airplane to a location near their final destination, where officials would then transfer the letters back to paper form.  The microfilmed letters took up very little space, leaving the remaining space for military supplies.  In addition, soldiers now often received mail in less than two weeks.  Previously, letters had taken at least a month to travel by ship.  Although the British government was the first to use this new concept, the United States soon followed suit.

Kodak, known for its film and camera technologies, developed the microfilm process that governments used to process V-Mail.  Basically, technicians photographed the original letters and those letters were placed on a long role of film.  Each letter was therefore reduced to the size of a thumbprint.  Kodak then built equipment that could print from microfilm back to paper.  The new printed form was approximately one-fourth of the size of the original letter.

Posters and other forms of wartime propaganda encouraged Americans to use V-Mail rather than the traditional mail process.  Writing short, cheerful letters on a regular basis was seen as patriotic.

Americans first began using V-Mail in early 1943.  By the time that the war ended, Americans on the home front had sent more than 500 million V-Mail letters to the troops overseas—that is more than half a billion!  American soldiers and sailors sent back almost as many V-Mail responses to their loved ones back home.  That means that, in all, Americans sent more than one billion V-Mail letters during the war.  Of course, there were even more letters sent through the more traditional avenues.  The United States government viewed mail as an important way of boosting troops’ morale during the war.  V-Mail, as well as other forms of communication, accomplished that goal—much as our messages still do today.