Painted wall sign with Jawi inscription and Japanese soldier, Kuching, Sarawak (photographed 14 September 1945)
Black-and-white photograph of a large mural painted on the curved wall of a public building. A soldier in a field cap and uniform, a pole in his left hand, extends his right arm toward a man in a songkok-style cap at lower right; a Jawi (Arabic-script Malay) inscription runs across the top. The words 'Ya Allah' and 'tentera Jepun' (the Japanese army) share one sentence, so an appeal to God in the readers' own script is attached to the army.
- Date
- December 1941
- Period
- Second World War
- Made by
- Japanese occupation authorities, Kuching, Sarawak (painter not recorded); photographed by Keith Carr Rainsford for the Australian War Memorial
- Region
- East Asia
- Country
- Empire of Japan
- Medium
- Signs and banners
- Issuer type
- Military
- Regime
- Showa Japan
- Leader
- Hideki Tojo
- Audience
- Foreign public
- Purpose
- Persuade or win support
- Themes
- War and the military, Religion, Empire and colonialism
- Event
- World War II
- Techniques
- Transfer
- Regime
- Empire of Japan, 1937 to 1945
- Leader
- Hideki Tōjō
- Source
- Identified Openly sourced: the speaker is who they say they are
- Source
- Wikimedia Commons (from the Australian War Memorial collection), retrieved September 29, 2026
- Rights
- Public domain (AWM: 'Copyright expired - public domain'; Commons: PD-Australia)
Photograph by Keith Carr Rainsford, 14 September 1945, Australian War Memorial 118699; via Wikimedia Commons. A 1945 photograph's Australian term had expired before 1 January 1996, so US copyright was not restored (URAA).
Text on the object
يا الله ! [illegible] كامي اوله تنترا جفون دري [illegible]
O God! [illegible] us by the army of Japan (tentera Jepun) from [illegible]
One curved line of Jawi runs right to left across the top of the mural. Read from a 960 px rendering of a 624 by 640 px original; the words between 'Ya Allah' and 'kami' and the words after 'dari' are not legible at this resolution and are marked [illegible] rather than guessed. Romanisation of the legible words: ya Allah; kami; oleh; tentera; Jepun; dari. Translation is a literal machine translation by Claude, not verified by a fluent reader.
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