Sumner Grant

Detail from envelope illustrated by Sumner Grant War: World War II, 1939-1946 Branch: Army Unit: Battery A, 906th Anti-Aircraft Artillery Service Location: Panama; Japan (Occupational Force) Rank: Private First Class Place of Birth: Boston, MA

Sumner Grant was an architecture and design student at The Cooper Union in New York before he joined the Army. He served during World War II in the Panama Coast Artillery Command and, after the Japanese surrender, in the Army of Occupation. From 1944 to 1945, he illustrated a cartoon strip called “FUBAR,” which ran in an Army publication “The Forty-Niner.” While in Panama, he covered one wall of the mess hall with a humorous mural depicting many of his fellow GIs. His Veterans History Project collection consists of illustrated envelopes he sent to his fiancee in the Bronx. After his death in 2000, she donated the envelopes to the Project. Grant chronicled the highs and lows of GI life so well that the drawings are like letters in themselves.