The US Army and Its Postal Service Abroad During World War 2
This web page contains links to the content of the exhibit pages for the exhibit 'The US Army and Its Postal Service Abroad During World War 2'.
On 7 December 1941 the Imperial Japanese Navy attempted to destroy the US Pacific Fleet at Pearl Harbor. At the same time, it began an offensive against US forces in the Philippines that resulted in the worst defeat suffered by the US Army at the hands of a foreign power since the War of 1812.
The Japanese government counted on these setbacks, plus the ones that would follow in the next 6 months as Japanese forces tore through the paper-thin defenses of the British, Dutch and Americans in the Pacific, to lead the United States to seek a negotiated settlement. Instead, American public opinion, American industry and over 15 million American citizens were mobilized in an effort aimed at the total defeat not just of Japan, but of the other Axis Powers as well.
This exhibit focuses on the mail to and from members of the US Army (including Army Air Forces) serving abroad.
It deals first with the handling of this mail: the army postal office numbering system(s), postal markings, postage rates, Army censorship and special classes of mail that emerged because of the war.
The second part of the exhibit follows the expansion of the Army Postal Service coincident with the geographic dispersal of the Army as it dealt with the Axis threat.
The following pages do not completely illustrate the history of the war or the military postal history of the period, since they exclude Navy, Marine Corps and Coast Guard mail handled by the Fleet Post Office system abroad, as well as almost all military mail within the United States. They do, however, — cover much the largest part of the war and the US military mail that it generated.
This exhibit was created by, and is the property of the late Al Kugel, and is being supplied by his heirs as a courtesy to the Military Postal History Society.
This exhibit, created by the late Al Kugel, is made up of 10 frames, each frame containing 16 pages. Due to their size, each frame is available as a separate PDF file. (See the PDF information page for additional help with this file format.)
This exhibit, created by the late Al Kugel, is made up of 10 frames, each frame containing 16 pages. Due to their size, each frame is available as a separate web page.
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Updated 10 September 2022