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![]() ![]() ![]() The Germans and Japanese sank six ships manned by the Merchant Marine in 1941 before Pearl Harbor, making mariners some of the first American casualties of the growing global conflict. There were 733 Merchant Marine ships sunk due to enemy attacks, and the Japanese captured 609 mariners as prisoners of war. ![]() Roughly four percent of those who served were killed, a higher casualty rate than that of any of the American military services during World War II. And 9,521 perished while serving-a higher proportion of those killed than any other branch of the US military. ![]() There were 243,000 mariners that served in the war. Yet decades passed before mariners were to be recognized as veterans. General Douglas MacArthur credited mariners with playing a vital role in the liberation of the Philippines in 1945, holding “no branch in higher esteem than the Merchant Marine.” General Dwight Eisenhower also declared in 1944 that “when final victory is ours there is no organization that will share its credit more deservedly than the Merchant Marine.” “Their contribution to final victory will be long remembered,” Eisenhower predicted in 1945. ”īob Hope wasn’t the only one to note the courage of the Merchant Marine and their importance for an Allied victory. The mariners-or private seamen whom the US government could use for defense measures during times of conflict-supplied Allied operations in all theaters of the war with troops and crucial supplies including fuel and ammunition, “never knowing when a torpedo might smash the hull above and send thousands of tons of sea water in to snuff out. “Z-Men are the guys without whom General ‘Ike’s’ army and Admiral Nimitz’s navy couldn’t live…Z-Men are the men of the Merchant Marine.”ĭrawing from the name of the identification papers, or z-card, required of the men who served in the US Merchant Marine, Hope went on to praise the hundreds of thousands of men who enlisted to sail on merchant ships across the Pacific and Atlantic. “Did you ever hear of the Z-Men? Sounds like a gag, doesn’t it?” Bob Hope asked his audience over a Christmas radio broadcast in 1944. Top Image: US Merchant Marine recruitment poster, 1944, courtesy of the National Archives. ![]()
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