Censorship! Myron Fox is vice president of the Military Postal History Society , a group that studies the mail that is sent to and from soldiers. He is an expert on United States military and civilian censorship in World War I and World War II. In this interview, he describes how wartime letters were censored.
When were the first soldiers' letters censored in the United States?We do not believe it was done in an overt manner before the Civil War. It might be that most of the troops before then were illiterate and officers were largely trusted, so they didn't bother.
There was some censoring in the Civil War because letters sometimes had to cross enemy lines. Most of the censoring comes from the prisoner-of-war camps. For example, if someone was writing a letter from Andersonville [a Confederate prison camp where many Union soldiers starved] those at the camp didn't want people to know what was happening, so the prisoners wouldn't be allowed to say anything bad about a camp. The first heavy censorship of U.S. soldiers took place during World War I.
What were the censors looking for?The censors were looking out for two things in World War I and World War II. They didn't want the soldier to say anything that would be of value to the enemy, such as where they were. They always wanted to camouflage how strong the troops were. "Loose lips sink ships" was the phrase that was very prevalent in WW II and that was the theory in WW I as well.
Officers also were looking to see any weakening of desire among the troops. It's very important in wartime for officers to know about morale issues.
Were the letters ever censored for moral reasons?One of our researchers recently found over 500 confiscated and condemned letters at the National Archives in College Park, Maryland. They included letters that used graphic language dealing with sex. Our member also found that in some cases the same writer would keep having his letters confiscated and apparently didn't get the message. These letters were never delivered and apparently the sender was never sent a notice of the offense.
Were other types of letters confiscated?Letters that were sent in foreign languages were also intercepted. Many members of the armed forces were immigrants or the children of immigrants and they were more comfortable communicating home in their native language. A letter written in Polish or Italian usually wasn't delivered because the typical censor didn't know what it said.
http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/warletters/sfeature/sf_censorship.html
To respond:
What types of censorship during times of war would you agree to and what types would you disagree with? Respond to previous posts. Post by Sunday May 2, 2010 for full credit.
