Craig Burke conducted a brief e-mail interview with Commander Arthur (Art).T.Burke (USN, Retired) concerning his letter home from Midway that appears on this site.

CRAIG-"I have a few questions about V-mail. How was V-mail done?"
ART-"V-mail was a method of having the sender write on a 1 page regular paper form that is photographed with a 16mm camera by the mail room; the resulting roll is air-mailed to a processing post office in the States where the film is developed, enlarged as black on white on regular 5"W x 4"L photographic paper, then folded into a 4.75"W x 3.75"L window envelope so that the recipient's address in the middle top of the form shows, then sent presumably by air mail to the recipient. At the top of the form from left to right is a circle for the censor's stamp, then a block for the recipient's name and address, then a block for the sender's name and address. Just below is a big area for the text that extends to the bottom where it says V-MAIL in the center."

CRAIG-"Was there a limit on how many pages of an individual letter you could send, or how many letters you could send at any one time?"
ART-"Each letter was only 1 page, but you were not limited in the number of letters you could send."

CRAIG-"Were you forbidden to use "Enterprise" letterhead stationery?"
ART-"V-MAIL was a joint War and Navy Department service; there was no room or place for ship's names, except as part of the sender's address. The regular mail could use (and did) the Enterprise heading and/or picture.

My address was: Lt.(jg) Art Burke, USN U.S.S. Enterprise, Fleet P.O San Francisco, California Nov. 23, 1942"

CRAIG-"What did it cost to send?"
ART-"For ordinary mail we had to buy stamps; V-MAIL was free."

CRAIG-"Was the censor on board the Enterprise? Did each ship have a censor? What was the censor's rank?"
ART-"Each Division Officer on board ship was responsible for censoring all mail from his Division; that was delegated to all officers in the Division who censored their individual unit's personnel; Officers cross-censored their own mail (I censored any of the other officers not above my rank and vice versa)."

CRAIG-"How did he know what to censor? Was he told by....Whom?"
ART-"The censoring rules were basically not to give information that could be used by the enemy such as ships in company, location, speed, course, plane info, damage to us or them (until info was released officially), names that might have been codes to try to tell family unauthorized info, etc."

CRAIG-"Did you know what was censored before it was sent? In other words, did the censor 'review' it with you?"
ART-"The sender did not get to review the censored mail."

CRAIG-" I noticed the date of your letter was Jun 8, 1942. The Yorktown finally sank on June 7, the previous day, yet you mentioned that our only casualty was a single damaged ship. Did you personally know that the Yorktown had already sunk when you wrote that, or was the Navy withholding that information at the time you wrote the letter?"
ART-"Yes, I knew all about the Yorktown, and the Hamman (DD) that went down with one of my close friends, but our mail couldn't give important info. I think that at the time, saying that only one our ships was damaged and not giving dates etc. was an acceptable disengenuity. By the way, on June 8th the famous pictures of the Mikuma which we first called the Mogami were shot by an Enterprise plane with a photographer on board."

CRAIG-"I know that's a lot of questions. Thanks for taking the time to answer."

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