This tale might be distasteful to some, and I’ll confess that the subject matter is disquieting. The fact remains that, during World War 2, in an effort to boost morale among the American male servicemen, the military magazine Yank–The Army Weekly (short for Yankee, the name by which most GIs were known overseas) always included a poster that featured a female in tight clothes. Known as a Pin-Up Girl, these women’s depiction was meant for the men to take out of the magazine and put up (or pin up) on the walls of their barracks, rooms, or even offices. The magazine, with a circulation in the millions, was sent weekly during the war years to every theater of war, from North Africa to Southeast Asia, Alaska to England.

Please realize that Yank never published pictures/pin-ups of women like magazines such as Playboy would later in the Vietnam War. But, while the women in Yank were clothed, they were posed in what was, for that time, suggestive postures. Bare legs featured prominently. Sometimes, the woman would be portrayed in a swimsuit or lying on a sofa or bed. Often, film or music stars were the photograph in the magazine; Ingrid Bergman, Lauren Bacall, Maureen O’Hara, and Donna Reed were some of the more famous ones. Jane Russell and Betty Grable were favorites of the servicemen. As a tongue in cheek issue in 1943, Yank featured a man (a sergeant named Charles Gardocki, shirtless and dressed in loincloth) as the pin-up, the editors saying that they did it for the women in uniform.

The magazine also contained news about life after the war such as opportunities for work and education, interviews with celebrities, and included the famous cartoon character, Sad Sack, a typically downtrodden army private. Some issues had short stories by famous authors in the 24 page magazine. One issue carried a letter from a Black soldier who wrote that German POWs were treated with more respect in the US Army than were Black men. That letter caused some controversy because of the number of letters received from servicemen who actually supported the assertion. But the pin-ups were what most men were eager to see in Yank.

And the magazine was incredibly popular with the troops. Copies of it carried great value as something that represented home and country to the fighting men. Once, supposedly, thousands of pin-ups were dropped over a Japanese-held island with the message, in Japanese, “This is what’s waiting for us at home; this is what we’re fighting for,” as a way of hurting Japanese morale. Of course, the Americans weren’t the only ones who liked the pin-ups. Enemy soldiers were sometimes captured with pin-ups found in their pockets or in their belongings, having gotten the magazine somehow during the ebb and flow of battle.

Now, we should mention that the objectification of anyone like the photos in Yank is wrong, obviously. But, for its time, Yank‘s pin-ups had a positive effect on the troops. And, as the war drew to a close, the editors had to decide what girl would have the honor of being the last pin-up girl in the magazine’s last edition. For weeks leading up to the last edition in late 1945, the magazine teased its readers with the secret identity of the girl. She had to be the best, the greatest girl that the boys on the front had ever seen. She had to epitomize the United States and all that it stood for. She had to be the ultimate pin-up.

And that’s why, in the last published edition of Yank, the pin-up girl was the one that every American, no matter who, loved the most.

The Statue of Liberty.