Crosses in the Wake of Allied Blockade, Japan Times & Advertiser cartoon
A newspaper cartoon titled 'Crosses in the Wake of Allied Blockade' shows a graveyard of crosses standing in water, each labelled with a British or American warship, while a top-hatted Uncle Sam figure sets up a cross marked U.S.S. California. Accurate British losses (Prince of Wales, Repulse, Hermes, Cornwall, Dorsetshire) share the plot with U.S. ships, so the list works as a selected tally in which the confirmed entries lend credibility to the disputed ones.
Propaganda techniques used in this cartoon
- Date
- May 13, 1942
- Period
- Second World War
- Made by
- The Japan Times & Advertiser, Tokyo (English-language daily; the cartoon credits no individual artist)
Full record
Region, Country, Medium, Issuer type, Regime, Leader, Audience, Purpose, Themes, Event, Source, Rights
- Region
- East Asia
- Country
- Empire of Japan
- Medium
- Cartoon
- Issuer type
- Media
- Regime
- Showa Japan
- Leader
- Hideki Tojo
- Audience
- Foreign public
- Purpose
- Persuade or win support
- Themes
- War and the military, Media and information
- Event
- World War II
- Leader
- Hideki Tōjō
- Source
- Identified Openly sourced: the speaker is who they say they are
- Source
- Wikimedia Commons (scanned from Cressman, 'That Gallant Ship USS Yorktown (CV-5)', 2004, p. 118), retrieved September 29, 2026
- Rights
- Public domain: Japanese newspaper work (organisational), pub. 1942; expired in Japan by 1996 (PD-1996)
The Japan Times & Advertiser, 13 May 1942; scan from Cressman (2004) via Wikimedia Commons
Text on the object
Original (English) · read from the image, not independently checked
[masthead, partly cropped] TIMES & ADVERTISER, WEDNESDAY, MAY 13, 1942 [title] Crosses in the Wake of Allied Blockade [crosses, left to right] H.M.S. HERMES [partly cropped]; H.M.S. DORSETSHIRE; H.M.S. CORNWALL; H.M.S. PRINCE OF WALES; H.M.S. REPULSE; U.S.S. SARATOGA; U.S.S. CALIFORNIA; [illegible prefix] YORKTOWN [map lettering] [partly illegible] ...N OCEAN; CORAL SEA
Read from a 960-px reproduction of a halftone book scan. The prefixes on the smaller crosses are small and partly obscured; the Hermes cross is cut by the left edge. The prefix on the Yorktown cross is not clearly legible and is marked [illegible prefix].
