The Legend of 'Kilroy was here' was started inadvertently by a shipyard inspector during WWII named James J. Kilroy , who used the logo to indicate his inspection of riveting in the newly constructed troop ships was complete.
To the unfortunate troops outbound in those ships, however, he was a complete mystery ... all they knew for sure was that he had 'been there first'. As a joke, they began placing the graffiti wherever they (the US forces) landed, claiming it was already there when they arrived.
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The aim of every artist is to arrest motion, which is life, by artificial means and hold it fixed so that a hundred years later, when a stranger looks at it, it moves again since it is life. Since man is mortal, the only immortality possible for him is to leave something behind him that is immortal since it will always move. This is the artist's way of scribbling Kilroy was here on the wall of the final and irrevocable oblivion through which he must someday pass.
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