Snafu and Tarfu Lakes in the Yukon

Snafu and Tarfu are two lakes just off the Atlin road. Both are pleasant places for summer fun where the fish are jumping and living is easy. If the names seem like military jargon, they are. They were named by Canadian military personnel who built the Atlin road in 1948.
It seems that the word SNAFU was coined during the Second World War by American military personnel who found themselves caught in the verbal web called Murphy Law which assumes that if something can go wrong it will. 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 probably the invention of two members of the California National Guard in March 1941. While in training, the two soldiers spent their time sending practice radio messages to each other. Most radio communications used the international Morse code but could be intercepted by the enemy. To overcome this, messages were scrambled or converted into five letter code groups by a mechanical device.
One day, the soldiers made a game of creating sentences from meaningless coded groups. One code was SNAFU - Situation normal, all fouled- up! In 1942, Time Magazine wrote an article about the effects of the wartime bureaucracy on the civilian population and called all the foul-ups - SNAFU.
You might wonder if SNAFU is a noun or a verb. A noun is the Yukon lake. A verb is what happens when you get there. The words quickly caught on with military personnel everywhere. In 1942, Frank Capra, chairman of the Armed Forces Motion Picture Unit and who later directed blockbuster films such as "It's a Wonderful Life," was in charge of producing "entertaining" training films for the American troops.
Capra came up with the clever idea for a series of cartoons featuring a bungling little soldier named Private Snafu. The voice of Private Snafu in the cartoons is that of Mel Blanc who was also the voice of Bugs Bunny. The rhyming script is the work 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. Yep - THE Dr. Suess. So the next time you visit the Yukon lakes called Snafu and Tarfu, think of these names as significant members of the North American language hall of fame.