Troops and Tattoos: A History in Ink

A few blocks away from Baltimore Harbor where many a sailor have made port and ships have launched for centuries, I walk into a tan and green-shingled building lined inside and out with tattoo memorabilia.

Snarling panthers, rickety ships, pin-up girls: slices of Americana-style ink hang over century-old tattoo guns as their modern successors whizz permanent art into the skin of ready and willing canvases. Plus there’s little banter and fun, free of charge.

This is the Baltimore Tattoo Museum. It’s been around for decades and outside of its civilian clientele, the shop has seen more than its fair share of service members and veterans looking to get permanently stamped with classic off the wall designs or custom-made ink.

The shop is also home to a cast of characters, including its owner Chris Keaton, who have many stories to tell of the best and worst ideas that have walked through the door…and for those tales, well – I’ll let you be the judge.

Main Topics

• Co-hosts Drew F. Lawrence and Kelsey Baker travel to the heart of Baltimore to discover the history of military tattoos.
• Interviews with tattooists and curators at the Baltimore Tattoo Museum.

   

Additional Resources

• Military Branches' Conflicting Tattoo Policies Really Are Confusing, Watchdog Finds
• The Meanings Behind 19 Classic Sailor Tattoos
• Army Relaxes Tattoo Rules as It Scrambles for New Recruits
• Some Neck and Hand Tattoos OK for Airmen and Guardians Under New Policy Aimed at Helping Recruiting

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Transcript:

SPEAKERS

Kelsey Baker, Drew F. Lawrence, Zach Fryer-Biggs, Tyler, President Richard Nixon, Bill, Chris Keaton.

Drew F. Lawrence

This episode is about veterans, troops and tattoos. Fair warning, all three of those categories bring some rough language. Listener discretion is advised. A few blocks away from Baltimore Harbor where many a sailor have made port and ships have launched for centuries, I walk into a tan and green-shingled building lined inside and out with tattoo memorabilia. Snarling panthers, rickety ships, pin-up girls: slices of Americana-style ink hang over century-old tattoo guns as their modern successors whizz permanent art into the skin of ready and willing canvases. Plus there’s little banter and fun, free of charge.

Chris Keaton

There's a polar bear in the snowstorm getting ice cream!

Woman

See I tapped out. There's no shame in that. I don't. I mean, I wouldn't know.

Drew F. Lawrence

This is the Baltimore Tattoo Museum. It’s been around for decades and outside of its civilian clientele, the shop has seen more than its fair share of service members and veterans looking to get permanently stamped with classic off the wall designs or custom-made ink. The shop is also home to a cast of characters, including its owner Chris Keaton, who have many stories to tell of the best and worst ideas that have walked through the door…and for those tales, well – I’ll let you be the judge.

Chris Keaton

And she got a ruler on the inside of her thigh that says you must be this long to ride.

Kelsey Baker

I'm texting my girlfriends that right now.

Drew F. Lawrence

That’s my friend Kelsey Baker, she’s a journalist and Marine Corps officer – and the only Marine I know who doesn’t have a single tattoo. It’s her first time in a tattoo parlor, though like many inked veterans before me, it certainly was not mine. But behind the jokes and the punk rock atmosphere, there’s a rich history here. Baltimore has always been a Navy town and because of that, it’s always been a tattoo town. We wanted to discover how these individual expressions of art – sometimes cheeky, many times meaningful, often an expression of the times they’re etched into – have earned themselves an iconic spot in the annals of military history where uniformity and rigid rules have typically reigned. What we got was a distinct story of how military and tattoo culture have woven themselves together. We learned how many early American tattooers made their fortune and legend off the backs – sometimes literally – of service members stationed near their shops. You’ll hear about barracks tattoos made from pen ink and razor motors, as well as travel kits that tattooers took around the world to lay art on any skin willing enough to endure the resulting pain. You’ll hear from tattooers who have etched many works onto young service members, too. Plus, in our journey to the heart of military tattoo history, I returned with a permanent token to remember the tale myself.

Tyler

You ready?

Drew F. Lawrence

Yup.

Tyler

Hope it hurts.

Drew F. Lawrence

For Military.com, my name is Drew Lawrence – it is September 29th and this is Fire Watch. It’s 1789 and you’re off the coast of Tahiti, one of the most remote islands in the South Pacific. You’re on the HMS Bounty, a British vessel tasked with taking breadfruit trees from the island to the West Indies to feed enslaved Africans there. Your crew is freshly inked with Tahitian tattoos and mutiny is afoot.

BOUNTY SCENE

Drew F. Lawrence

You’d think they’d be antithetical, but they are far from separate cultures. Over the last decade, as tattoos become more and more prevalent in American society, the military services have rolled back restrictions on tattoos. The Navy now allows hand and finger tattoos and the Space Force lets Guardians get a singular tattoo on the neck or behind the ear that is no larger than one inch. Other branches, like the Marine Corps, have been slower to roll back those restrictions and the Army quite infamously had a time just a decade ago where the service’s top enlisted leader placed what was widely considered draconian tattoo rules on soldiers, specifically ones that would be quote “prejudicial to good order and discipline.” Those rules have ebbed and flowed over the years. To really understand their importance in American lore, our friends at The Baltimore Tattoo Museum said you have to go back to the early days of naval warfare where sailors would – and still do – get tattoos to celebrate certain mile markers incurred during their service.

Chris Keaton

Sailors would get pig and rooster on their feet because they're always the animals that washed up when ships crashed. They would get propellers on there but for the same reason.

Drew F. Lawrence

That’s Chris Keaton again. He has inked plenty of troops in his time and has a pretty encyclopedic knowledge of tattoo history. Swallow tattoos meant a sailor traveled a certain distance, according to the Navy. An anchor meant a sailor crossed the Atlantic and “HOLD FAST” across the knuckles gave sailors extra grip on rope when storms thundered down.

Chris Keaton

And mile markers of your life.

Drew F. Lawrence

We walked up a flight of stairs into the studio, where tattoo designs and easels and different instruments of the art form decorated the upper floor of the museum. It was here, overlooking eastern avenue as artists came in and out of the room with their work, that we interviewed Chris. And it was here we learned that American military tattooing culture really found its footing after World War II. Tattooing in the 40’s was considered underground and nefarious – only prisoners, outlaws and service members had them.

Chris Keaton

During World War II, a lot of people got them. Subsequently when they came back, not all of them fit into society as well because of PTSD and other reasons. And so they would be in in jails, and would -- if they were artistic, some of them would even pick up the art themselves and do it. The military came back also an joined a lot of bike groups because the brotherhood and camaraderie of that that they had missed from the war. They were doing that just feel feel something.

Drew F. Lawrence

In fact, many tattooers started by doing “kitchen scratchers” in what would not be considered regulated parlors by today’s standards. That tradition has certainly carried on in the military with barracks tattoos. After talking with the guys at the shop, Kelsey could probably tell you how to set up your own and maybe do a half decent one herself – more on that later… But it was during this time, the 1940s, that men such as Sailor Jerry earned their legacy, often largely built on tattooing service members shipping off and coming back from war. Norman Keith Collins, also known as Sailor Jerry, was a Navy veteran who was exposed to different tattoos from his fellow service members and travels across the world. After the Navy, Collins found a home in Hawaii where his art flourished amid the brothels, bars and seedy parts of 1940s Honolulu. “Soldiers and sailors wanted to grab all the experiences they could before they shipped out,” Collins’ official website says. “Whether a man was raised in a Park Avenue mansion or a farmhouse in Alabama, while on shore leave, he was fixated with one of three things…to have some drinks, enjoy the company of women and get tattooed.”

Chris Keaton

The designs were passed all around the world by the sailors. They would get tattooed in one port, and if they went to the next port, and the tattooist in the next shop saw what they thought was a great design on that person, they would trace it right off them.

Drew F. Lawrence

Back then, the tattoos were a sign you had done something. You’d been somewhere. You were an “other” who went on adventures and fought the nation’s enemies. And when you got home, you didn’t care who knew it.

Chris Keaton

During wars, people knew that there was a chance that they they wouldn't come back. So they did it for various reasons, either for identification, or what the hell do they have to lose they're going into this battle and might as well feel some pain beforehand and get marked up.

Drew F. Lawrence

That tradition continued on to the Korean War. In fact, Bill, one of the tattooers at the museum, told us a story about his dad, a Korean War veteran, getting in trouble with his own father over a tattoo.

Bill

Do you know what a flip flop tattoo is?

Kelsey Baker

I have an idea.

Bill

So as you can see, if you look at these upside down, it is no longer her head, but between her legs.

Kelsey Baker

Oh, yeah.

Bill

So that's what a flip flop tattoo is. My father had gone to Tattoo Charlie's on Baltimore Street, and he had gotten one or the other and came home and was sitting in the kitchen. And my grandfather walked up behind him and could see it upside down rather than right side up where she's kissing the bird and saw exactly what it was and told him you need to go and get that covered. And he went back to Tattoo Charlie's and got an eagle sitting on a tree stump to cover it. Right after he just got right after he just got a fresh tattoo.

President Richard Nixon

Why did America get involved in Vietnam in the first place? The war was causing deep division. There were some who urged that I end the war at once by ordering the immediate withdrawal of all American forces. From a political standpoint, this would have been a popular, popular, popular and an easy course to follow.

Drew F. Lawrence

Amid the turmoil that Vietnam brought, troops got tattoos, in part, to find meaning in the military they were drafted into – memorial and “moto” tattoos became popular, like crossed M-16s on skulls and dog tags. Some of these were recorded in a history published by the Department of Veterans Affairs called “Warriors, Tattoos, and the Stories They Tell.” When Vietnam troops returned home, they were thrust into a society that largely did not accept them, let alone want to hear what they’d endured. Over the decades, many found solace in telling their stories on their skin – they didn’t have to speak a word, some tattoos could be covered up when they wanted, but the reflections were permanent and loud in their own right. Unit insignias, purple hearts, and names of fallen friends appeared on the skin of Vietnam veterans in the decades after the war. One veteran told the VA he got sleeve tattoos to cover up the lesions and lumps that exposure to Agent Orange left him with. Another said he got images in a South Asian style to help reckon with the trauma he endured during the war there. While still the mark of the outcast, suddenly tattoos were not only about showing off the cool places you had been and the things you had done, but a way of dealing with and expressing the hardships that came with those ventures. As tattoos have become more mainstream in American culture, the sentiment behind service members getting one has largely remained the same, especially through the Global War on Terror years. Just before 9/11, nearly one-third of service members had at least one tattoo and as the decades of war dragged on, that number has likely only increased.

Kelsey Baker

Is there a difference between what people ask for now, and the kind of post GWOT era compared to what you might have been doing 20 years ago?

Chris Keaton

It's bigger, more complex designs. A lot of like half sleeves of American flags and things like that. Still get some people that like the old traditional stuff, but more people are, are getting like black and gray stuff. It's all over the place. Really

Drew F. Lawrence

Kelsey and I recounted some of the tattoos we have seen – the Twin Towers, silhouettes of soldiers standing watch and ink that denoted the operations they were on. Others were, well – they were made with character let’s say. Tattoo of rank that was quickly lost, the name of a girlfriend that didn’t pan out – one of my soldiers said he had a lightsaber on his…uhhh…maybe that’s for a different episode. It also sounds like Chris, who sat in the tattooer’s seat after our interview, has done some interesting ink.

Chris Keaton

I did a BUTT-erfly where the whole butt was a butterfly, and the body was a crack.

Drew F. Lawrence

Chris showed us more of his museum's collection of distinctly American memorabilia, pin-ups from famous tattooers that would fit right in on the nose of a heavy bomber and more USMC designs than I could count.

Chris Keaton

Here we have somebody's travel kit from I would say, the 40s or 50s in this weird case to store their needles in because they would reuse them back then. They just rinse them off or wash them off.

Kelsey Baker

I haven't seen it or experienced it myself. But I've heard of barracks tattoos. So have you ever dealt with people who come in with tattoos?

Chris Keaton

Oh, yeah. We call them kitchen wizards here. They'll tattoo out of their house on their front porch all over the place. And it's we they sometimes can be covered up.

Drew F. Lawrence

But what makes a good barracks tattoo.

Chris Keaton

If it's in there clean. If you can read it what it is, and it's not scarred and it's a crapshoot. Yeah. I'm still discovering stuff all the time tattooing. I've been doing it 30 years this year.

Drew F. Lawrence

Alright so truth be told, I’m stalling here. For someone who has a decent amount of tattoos, I never enjoy getting them. I’m not afraid to admit it hurts. But we covered every inch of the shop – to include the polaroids of cover-up walk ins that would make any Marine squeamish. Plus, the ink was on Military.com’s dime that day and Tyler, the tattooer who volunteered to torture me for a couple hours was patiently waiting. If you remember from the top of the episode, Tyler said he hoped it hurt. And if you’re wondering how it felt, well not great.

Tyler

I worked over in a shop called Champion Tattoo that was across the street from the 8th and I Marine barracks.

Kelsey Baker

I guess most memorable people you got in there. Did you get any politicians ever?

Drew F. Lawrence

A lot of Marines?

Tyler

Just Marines.

Drew F. Lawrence

But getting a tattoo can be like a therapy session, Tyler and I talked about family and music and cartoons, where we’re from and life in general. I learned that he came from a military family and grew up right near Fort Campbell on the Tennessee-Kentucky border.

Tyler

My hometown being that it was Fort Campbell. There's a street there called Fort Campbell Boulevard. And Fort Campbell Boulevard has probably...I don't know how many now but when I was a kid, it had multiple tattoo shops along there because they would just get around the military base and open up because it's almost guaranteed you're gonna get busy if you're located over there.

Drew F. Lawrence

The pain is constant and makes you present, just the needle going in and out of my skin for minutes and hours that ticked by. It was cathartic in its own way. Kelsey laughed and toured the shop more, talking to others getting their own tattoos.

Kelsey Baker

What's worse, a dick tattoo or a butterfly on the vagina tattoo?

Chris Keaton

Butterfly on the vagina, it's gotta be bigger. I think that definitely worse, more painful, though. No, the woman I tattooed...they did not like that at all.

Drew F. Lawrence

By the afternoon, I had my very own Baltimore Tattoo Museum exhibit right on my arm, one to add to the collection that say I was here or I believe in this or that or whatever, this just looks cool. And this one DID look cool. A bird – a heron to be exact – flying toward my hand, with a crazy eye and nice thick lines. Americana style. Can’t go wrong with that. Thank you, M=my friend. Appreciate it. Good talking to you. Thanks for having us.

Kelsey Baker

If I ever get a tattoo, I know who I'm calling.

Tyler

Just don't call late, I go to sleep early.

Drew F. Lawrence

Oh, I almost forgot. How to make your own barracks tattoo parlor.

Kelsey Baker

Yeah, so the kind characters at The Baltimore Tattoo Museum gave me some pretty good tips on how to set up your own barracks tattoo parlor. First, you want to take the battery out—

Drew F. Lawrence

Kelsey, before we get into that, let me just call our editor real quick to make sure this is good.

Zach Fryer-Biggs

No, absolutely not. Whatever you're about to say the answer is no.

Drew F. Lawrence

Okay, but Zach, what if we're just teaching them about like a hypothetical barracks tattoo shop?

Zach Fryer-Biggs

The lawyers already don't like me. Please don't do this.

Drew F. Lawrence

Okay, fine. We won't do barracks tattoos on this episode. But if you want to learn more about tattoos or the military in general, check out our other episodes of Fire Watch or head over to Military.com. And if you want to learn about barracks tattoos, or just give us some feedback, DON'T *wink wink* email us at podcast@military.com.

Kelsey Baker

Yeah and a special thank you to the tattooers and curators at the Baltimore Tattoo Museum for helping us with this great episode.

Drew F. Lawrence

If you liked this episode and want to let us know, give us a rating, wherever you get your podcasts. And as always, thanks for listening.