462 ANNUAL REPORT SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 194 5 



the character of some of the inquiries could in the wrong hands provide 

 clues to future military operations. 



The inquiries were handled in various ways, but in general, staff 

 members were left free to deal directly with the official making the 

 inquiry in order to avoid administrative complications and the in- 

 evitable delays resulting therefrom. When the staff member called 

 knew the answer to only one phase of the problem, he supplemented 

 his information by referring the inquirer to others on the staff who 

 had the knowledge needed to complete the story. Other requests 

 came to the staff through the Ethnogeographic Board, discussed later 

 in this statement, through Army and Navy liaison officers, and through 

 the War Committee. As inquiries were answered to the satisfaction 

 of the Army, Navy, or war agency officials, the Smithsonian's re- 

 sources of specialized knowledge became more widely known, and 

 requests for information steadily increased in number. 



The number of recorded requests from Army, Navy, and war 

 agencies for the war years was 1,509 ; the number of such requests 

 for Smithsonian publications containing needed technical or other 

 data was 1,186 — a total number of 2,095 calls upon the Institution's 

 resources. Furthermore, many calls for one reason or another did 

 not get recorded, so that the real total would go considerably higher. 

 Such statistics, of course, serve only to show the volume of the Smith- 

 sonian's contribution in this field, not the time or effort expended, or 

 the value of the work. Many calls were for "spot" information and 

 could be answered immediately; others required a varied amount of 

 research; and many led to detailed written reports with illustrations. 



It would serve no useful purpose to list here all the recorded re- 

 quests for information; instead there will be tabulated merely the 

 more or less popularized headings under which they have been roughly 

 classified, with an example or two under each to show their great diver- 

 sification. These headings, with examples, are as follows : 



Anthropology, General 

 Examples : Information on the current political situation in Peru with special 

 reference to Axis espionage — for a war agency. 



Request for the anthropology laboratory to make two busts of an average 

 youth of 19 for use in designing naval aeronautical equipment. 



Ethnology 



Examples: Data on the language and ethnology of the people of the islands 

 off Formosa — for the Army. 



Description and pictures of native Burmese houses — for the Army. 

 Physical Anthropology 



Examples : Information on the scientific concept of race for use in an anti- 

 Axis progaganda motion picture designed to neutralize fallacious racial 

 ideas — for a war agency. 



Methods of distinguishing physical features of Japanese and Chinese for 

 use in pamphlet to be distributed among troops — for the Army. 



