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Posted by John Danza
on November 7, 2009, 10:08 am
V-Mail was a process used in World War 2 to cut down on the amount of space that letters to and from soldiers would take up on military transports. The Allied military (there was a British version as well, called Airgraphs) recognized that soldier morale was extremely important to the war effort, with so many millions of young men shipped thousands of miles away. The best way to keep up morale is by encouraging the exchange of letters from home. However, with all those letters being sent, it presented a problem of space on planes and ships which was otherwise needed for transporting war materiel.
To solve the space problem, the military turned to Kodak and their Recordak System. This system had been developed as a microfilming process for office records. Here's a 1942 Kodak magazine ad talking about V-Mail and their process:
The way V-Mail works is that a special form would be used to write the letter. This form was a single page only, because it was important to keep the letters to a single page to make the process work. It also encouraged people to write more often, an added bonus. The form itself was folded into its own envelope. To encourage its use by soldiers, the government did not charge postage for V-Mail letters. Here's a sample of the V-Mail form, front and back:
The letters from home were sent to centralized stations in the U.S., while letters from the soldiers were sent to centralized stations in the war zones. Soldier letters were read by censors first to confirm there was no information being shared that related to military operations. From there, the letters were microfilmed and put on reels containing thousands of letters all destined for the same general area. Those reels were then shipped to a station in the appropriate destination and the letters printed, put in envelopes, and sent to their final recipient. Here's some examples of a strip of V-Mail film and a couple of letters:
This last sample of a V-Mail letter is very interesting, and heartbreaking. It's a "Dear John" letter that a woman sent to a soldier she had been dating. Unfortunately, it never reached him as he had been killed. The letter was returned with "Deceased" noted on the envelope.
The next few posts will show how V-Mail was advertised by the government and a number of companies to bolster the war effort.
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