Loose Lips Sink Ships

Hi, you have A Way with Words.

Hi, this is Sharon. I’m calling from Omaha, Nebraska.

Hi, Sharon. Welcome to the show. What’s up?

Hi, thank you. Well, I hope you can tell me what’s up.

I am calling to learn a little bit about a phrase that my grandfather always says,

And he says, loose lips sink ships.

Everyone uses it, not just my grandfather.

In our family, whenever there’s a secret or something that no one wants anyone else to know about,

They just kind of say, all right, don’t worry about it.

Don’t be a loose lip. I don’t want to sink ships.

So it’s just a way of keeping a secret.

Yeah, or just letting people know, hey, don’t pass this on.

It’s kind of a funny joke where if you want to share something, for instance, we just bought a house and we wanted to share with everyone ourselves.

And so I called and let my grandpa know and he said, you don’t have to worry about any loose lips over here.

Right.

And I’ve asked him before when I was much younger, hey, what does that mean or where is it from?

And he said, well, I can’t tell you because I don’t have loose lips.

That’s unfair.

I’m hoping you can tell me.

Yes, we can indeed.

So the saying loose lips sink ships goes back to World War II.

There’s actually a famous propaganda post, or propaganda in the positive sense because it was targeted at Americans,

That says loose lips might sink ships.

And the whole idea was you didn’t know who was listening to you in a bar or out in public or church or wherever

Who might hear you say, yeah, I’m shipping out tomorrow.

Or who might hear you say, I’m going to be stationed in Okinawa or wherever.

And you just didn’t know what kind of details the enemy could put together

Because the American government knew there were spies.

We knew that there were Germans in the United States

Who were gathering information and sending it back.

And the Japanese internment camps came out of that fear as well.

There was a ton of propaganda.

If you Google this phrase, I mean, the posters are all cool.

They’re definitely from another era.

Beautiful watercolor things.

And I don’t even know what all.

Idle Gossip Sink Ships was another variation.

That’s interesting.

Don’t talk chum, chew Top’s gum.

So different advertisers got into it as well.

Okay.

So I could even maybe order one of the older posters for my grandfather.

Yeah, you can.

Oh, you should.

What a good idea.

You can download the high-res versions, I believe, from the Library of Congress,

And they’re quite beautiful, and they would print really nicely on an 11 by 17 page.

We won’t tell them about it.

One of the things that I’ve read was a guy who was talking about his boot camp days during World War II when he was inducted and all that go through.

And he talks about this hour-long ceremony almost or this really strange session where the whole session is some commanding officer in the front of a group of these newbies, these green recruits.

The whole thing basically is him saying over and over in a lot of different ways, do not talk.

Do not tell people where you’re going.

Don’t tell people what’s happening.

Do not write letters to home that say anything except I am fine.

It’s just the whole thing is about like every little thing that you let slip is a piece of evidence that the enemy now has.

That makes a lot of sense.

I mean, my grandfather was about 10 or 11 during World War II.

He might have seen the posters.

Yeah, probably made an impression on him, right?

Seen it in the movie reels or something like that.

Okay.

Yeah, thank you.

That’s very helpful.

Thanks, Sharon.

Yeah, order him a poster.

That sounds good.

You dig it.

Yeah, it’s going to be a really good gift.

All right, take care now.

Thanks for calling, Sharon.

Thanks so much.

I appreciate it.

Bye-bye.

All righty.

Bye-bye.

Bye-bye.

War Advertising Council was the governmental organization that put those posters together.

And you probably can think of, they always had like shady looking enemies.

Right.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Very evocative.

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