Comic Book Covers Part 1

Title

The film starts out by defining propaganda. He then goes on to describe the OWI and Axis propaganda. The above are normal WWII posters.

Comic book covers depicting the Japanese in their stereotyped form.

Rationing.

This was at the start of the internment of persons of Japanese ancestry on the West Coast.

Films were also used as propaganda along with radio broadcasts.

Another film. Notice the smiling Japanese who is about to ravish a white woman. This is one of the approaches to raise hatred of the Japanese. (I have yet to see a poster about the Japanese or the Germans attacking a Black woman.)

This is the cover of a pulp magazine of the times.

Propaganda, he notes, is to influence people's beliefs. One form were all the posters, etc, which encouraged people to buy war bonds, buy war stamps, recycle metal, rubber and fats, etc. Then there were the ones that were for the purpose of raising pride in America. Another form was the kind that depicted the enemy as threatening America and its people.

Another one where a almost demonic Japanese soldier is threatening a white woman.

Another comic, another Japanese attacking a white woman. He says the comic book covers were enticing customers with a single, exciting image.

Captain Marvel, a major superhero of the time. My guess is that there must have been at least some kids wondering why all the super-heroes didn't gang up on the Axis.

He notes that children were reading comics during the war. However, adults read them to and he notes that the U.S. Army was the largest single customer for comics.



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