Speaker Series – V-Mail In WWII

The attack on Pearl Harbor, Sunday, December 7^th, 1941, plunged the United States into a world-wide war that stretched across the Atlantic Ocean, Europe, North Africa, India, China, Australia, and islands across the vast Pacific Ocean. Ultimately, some 16 million men and women joined the armed services over the course of the 42 months of the conflict. Among the most important means of keeping up morale of all service personnel was, in these pre-Internet days, sending and, most importantly, receiving letters and packages from home. However, transporting tons of mail by ship – the primary means of overseas transport then – could take weeks and, sometimes, months to reach destinations. However, one means had been devised, based on something the British had come up with months before Pearl Harbor, that a joint effort by the Department of War (Army/Army Air Forces), Navy Department (Navy/Marines/Coast Guard), and the Post Office Department began planning for in the months before Pearl Harbor … V-Mail.

Photographer-filmmaker-historian David Watts, Jr. will tell the story of V-Mail from the earliest photographic experiments that made it possible, to how it worked, and the great efforts applied, by the government and businesses, to getting people to use it.

As part of the presentation, the exhibition of World War II writing materials, put together by Richard Binder and David Watts, Jr. will be on display in the museum for the afternoon.
No reservations needed to attend.