Content note: Wartime leaflet text referring to sexual violence and using racial terms for Allied troops. This object is shown as it was published. Why
'Hey! You diggers! He came, he saw, he conquered!' (Japanese leaflet to Australian troops)
A colour landscape leaflet headed 'Hey! You diggers! He came, he saw, he conquered!'. A uniformed U.S. serviceman kisses a young woman in an apron while Australian soldiers lie dead in the foreground beneath a Union Jack. The tell is the pairing of the dead Australians with the embracing couple and a caption blaming Allied troops of other nations for taking their women: it casts the U.S. soldier, not the enemy, as the Australian's rival.
- Date
- 1944
- Period
- Second World War
- Made by
- Imperial Japanese forces (attributed on Wikimedia Commons as 'Japanese Government')
- Region
- East Asia
- Country
- Empire of Japan
- Medium
- Leaflet
- Issuer type
- Military
- Regime
- Showa Japan
- Leader
- Hideki Tojo
- Audience
- Enemy forces
- Purpose
- Persuade or win support
- Event
- World War II
- Techniques
- Scapegoating
- Leader
- Hideki Tōjō
- Source
- Identified Openly sourced: the speaker is who they say they are
- Source
- Wikimedia Commons (image sourced from psywarrior.com), retrieved October 2, 2026
- Rights
- Public domain: anonymous Japanese wartime leaflet c. 1944 (Commons marks it PD)
Japanese wartime leaflet (anonymous); reproduction via psywarrior.com and Wikimedia Commons. The Commons page uses a U.S.-federal PD template that does not fit a Japanese-made leaflet; the basis relied on is its anonymous Japanese 1944 origin.
Text on the object
Hey! You diggers! He came, he saw, he conquered! [body text, small print at right, mostly illegible at this resolution; opening words read: "Drinking, you Diggers? will never come back alive. The BLACKS and the YANKS are [illegible] your wives, your daughters, your [illegible]" ... remainder [illegible]]
Only the two-line headline is fully legible. The paragraph at right was read from a 443 x 306 px image and is largely illegible; the partial reading is tentative.
