Content note: Ethnic slur 'Jap' in the headline; a uniformed guard with swastika armband over forced-labour prisoners. This object is shown as it was published. Why

If each of us figured our "little bit" didn't count, we'd all be Jap or Nazi prisoners right now!

Commercial home-front poster: a German-helmeted guard with swastika armband and submachine gun watches three men dig in snow behind barbed wire. The fear-appeal pictures captivity as the result of doing too little; name-calling appears in the printed word 'Jap'.

Propaganda techniques used in this poster

Fear appeal Name-calling

Date: 1941
Period: Second World War
Made by: Think American Institute (Kelly-Read & Co., Rochester, N.Y.), artist C. R. Miller
Region: North America
Country: United States
Medium: Poster
Issuer type: Corporation
Regime: Roosevelt Administration
Leader: Franklin D. Roosevelt
Audience: Domestic public
Purpose: Mobilize or secure compliance
Themes: War and the military, Home front, Race and ethnicity
Event: World War II
Regime: Roosevelt administration
Leader: Franklin D. Roosevelt
Source: Identified Openly sourced: the speaker is who they say they are
Source: U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Record Group 44, World War II Posters, retrieved October 4, 2026
Rights: Public domain (U.S. government work)
Think American Institute. National Archives and Records Administration, RG 44, 44-PA-1050 (NAID 514575).

Text on the object

Original (English) · read from the image, not independently checked

If each of us figured our "little bit" didn't count, we'd all be Jap or Nazi prisoners right now !
[signature:] C R MILLER
THINKAMERICAN REG. U.S. PAT. OFF.
[imprint:] THINKAMERICAN INSTITUTE
No. 170--COPYRIGHT--KELLY-READ & CO., ROCHESTER, N.Y.