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The Yanks have all the Girls

Artist Sidney Simon (American, 1917 - 1997)

DateJune 1943

Object number00015106

NameDrawing

MediumInk and inkwash on paper

DimensionsOverall: 370 x 456 mm, 150 g

ClassificationsArt

Credit LineANMM Collection Purchased with USA Bicentennial Gift funds

Terms

DescriptionAn ink and wash drawing by Sidney Simon, an official war artist with the United States army during WWII. The image is titled 'The Yanks Have all the Girls' and depicts several United States servicemen in a park preoccupied with women, while an incapacitated Australian soldier walks by - supported by fellow diggers - unnoticed.HistoryAfter the Japanese attack on the Hawaiian base of Pearl Harbour on 7 December 1941, America officially entered World War II. In late 1942 the Corps of Engineers established a War Art Unit in its Operations and Training Branch, Troops Division. By 1943, the Associated American Artists organisation and the War Department's War Art Advisory Committee had recruited and selected civilian and military artists to create a pictorial record of the US Army during the war. The 23 military and 19 civilian artists of the War Art Unit were sent to General MacArthur's command in the south-west Pacific in May 1943. They were to portray the Allied advance to the Philippines and other scenes of Allied victory in New Guinea. The artists were also instructed to depict the daily life of the soldiers, and the environment and landscape in which the operations played out. Due to lack of funds, the program lasted just over six months. The Army reassigned some of the military artists to other Army duties where many continued to produce art, and organised others into a War Art Unit under the Historical Branch, Assistant Chief of Staff. Upon hearing the news of the withdrawal of funds, the private sector volunteered to finance the program. Magazine 'Life' employed some of the civilian artists as war correspondents, and the medical supply company Abbott Laboratories commissioned civilian artists to record the work of the Army Medical Corps. These artists were transported and stationed with the Army until the program ended in 1945. As a result of the programs, the United States Army acquired over 2,000 works of art by the end of World War II. Sidney Simon, First Lieutenant in the Engineers Corps, was one of the military artists employed in the War Art Unit. Born in Pittsburg, Pennsylvania in 1917, Simon studied at the Carnegie Institute of Technology, Pittsburg between 1932 and 1936, and at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts and the University of Pennsylvania between 1936 and 1940. During the first year of his three-year Edwin Austin Abbey fellowship, Simon joined the Armed Services. He was deployed in the War Art Unit to New Guinea in the south-west Pacific, and was involved in the recruitment of other artists. Several of Sidney Simon's works featured in the exhibition 'US War Paintings from MacArthur's New Guinea Campaign 1944 -1945' which toured Brisbane, Melbourne, Adelaide, and Sydney between October 1944 and January 1945. In the foreword of the exhibition catalogue, T Russell Drysdale writes: "We in Australia must consider ourselves fortunate to have the opportunity to see these pictures, for, though they naturally concern themselves with the sacrifice and sufferings of the American soldier, the Australian soldier, as a brother in arms, is making those sacrifices also... and for the common man all over the world it is his story". SignificanceThis is one of several illustrations by American war artist Sidney Simon of the romantic relationship formed between American servicemen and Australian women during World War II. The United States forces played a dominant role in the south-west Pacific, and thousands of US troops streamed into Australia, resulting in complex social, cultural and economic changes to Australian society.