How lakes Snafu and Tarfu got their names

Snafu and Tarfu are two lovely lakes just off the Atlin Road. Both are pleasant places for Yukoners seeking summer fun where the fish are jumping and living is easy.
The lakes are small, safe, fish-filled havens in the land of the big sky. If their names seem like military jargon, they are. The lakes were named by Canadian military personnel who built the Atlin Road in 1948.
Just a few years earlier, the Canadians had been the beneficiaries of a full dose of American military slang from the U.S. Corp. of Army Engineers who built the original Alaska Highway .
The story of how these two weird, wacky and wonderful words entered the vernacular is somewhat shrouded by the mists of time, but let me try and see if we can find their origin.
It seems that the word SNAFU was coined by American military personnel during the Second World War. They frequently found themselves caught in the verbal spider’s web called Murphy Law, which assumes that if something can go wrong, it will.

They also felt the effects of the law of unintended consequences, which means that no matter how well something is planned, something unplanned will happen that is not intended.
When that happens, the whole affair is likely to wind up as a SNAFU, an acronym for “Situation normal, all fouled up.” Naturally there are variations on the word “fouled”.
The words were likely the invention of two members of the California National Guard who had been ordered to active military duty in March 1941. While in training, Don Taylor and John Paup spent their time sending practice radio messages to each other.

Most radio communications used the international Morse code but had the disadvantage of being easily intercepted by the enemy. To overcome the problem, messages were scrambled or converted into five-letter code groups by a mechanical device. Example: The original “clear text” message might be: General Bootlikker requires more artillery support.
After being scrambled or converted, it would then be transmitted in five-letter groups, CSIAM OTILA IHTDA SNAFU DWXBR POOPO, and later unscrambled.
One day, Don and John made a game of creating sentences from meaningless coded groups. One code was SNAFU - Situation normal, all f——- up! After the soldiers coined the term in the early days of the war, major publications had a field day.

SNAFU seems to have been used first in a military context in the September 1941 edition of a publication called American Notes and Queries. Then, in 1942, Time Magazine wrote a lengthy thesis about the effects of a wartime bureaucracy on the civilian population and blamed all the foul-ups on one word - SNAFU. Time wrote: “ U.S. citizens knew that gasoline rationing and rubber requisitioning were snafu. For months, the people and their leaders had pussyfooted around the twin horrors. There were orders and counter-orders. All were different.
“The people, numb with bewilderment, choked with wrath, gave up. Snafu is a good, grumbling military precision word that meant when the supply ship arrived; the stuff on the bottom should have been on top.

“Snafu is when radio receiving sets arrived at a jungle camp without batteries. Snafu is when a Seattle regiment is shipped to New York for embarkation, and an identical New York regiment is shipped to the Pacific Coast .” Here you might ask if SNAFU is a noun or a verb. A noun is the Yukon lake. A verb is what happens when you get there. But I digress. It did not take long for SNAFU to have a big brother, a word describing far dastardly foul-ups than mere SNAFU. When things got really messy, the word TARFU took over. It meant “Things are really fouled up.” Probably beyond repair. Later, Fubar made an appearance, but because it meant that the situation was way beyond repair, it didn’t gain the cache of SNAFU or TARFU which became world-wide celebrities in the mid-‘40s. The words quickly caught on with military personnel everywhere. During World War II, America ’s entire industrial might was geared to winning the war - and so was the entertainment industry. In 1942, Frank Capra, chairman of the Armed Forces Motion Picture Unit who later directed blockbuster films such as ‘It’s a Wonderful Life’, was in charge of producing “entertaining” training films for the troops. Capra came up with the clever idea for a series of cartoons featuring a bungling little soldier named Private SNAFU. Capra wanted the SNAFU films to be first class, so he invited bids from the major Hollywood cartoon studios. Walt Disney Studios placed a bid, but the contract to produce the series was won by Warner Brothers.

The first cartoon was called “Coming! Snafu!” and introduced American G.I.s to Private SNAFU.
In the second cartoon, called ‘Gripes’, Private SNAFU pays for the foul-ups he’s caused by getting ordered on KP duty, which often meant peeling potatoes. After some complaining in rhyme, SNAFU is visited by the ‘Technical Fairy First Class’, a cigar-chomping, tiny flying wise-guy. “I hoid ya sayin’ dat everything stank, how you’d run things better if you had more rank, so as Technical Fairy, I gotta good notion, ta give ya a chance pal, here’s a promotion!” Private SNAFU becomes the head of everything but manages to make things worse. His voice of Private SNAFU is that of Mel Blanc who was also the voice of Bugs Bunny and Barney Rubble. The rhyming script is the work of writer, Ted Geisel.

Years later, Geisel’s special style of rhyming schemes would earn him world acclaim in books, movies and TV specials as Dr. Suess. So the next time you visit the Yukon lakes called Snafu and Tarfu along the Atlin Road , think of these names as significant members of the North American Language Hall of Fame.