---
title: Keep your trap shut, careless talk may cost American lives
url: https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/keep-your-trap-shut-army-air-forces-1941/
description: 'Careless-talk security poster: a caricatured Japanese officer, with round glasses, buck teeth and a rising-sun cap badge.'
section: Collection
---

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2. [Collection](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/)
3. Keep your trap shut, careless talk may cost American lives

**Content note:** Caricature of a Japanese officer with exaggerated teeth and round glasses, printed as issued. This object is shown as it was published. [Why](https://propagandaarchive.org/about/#as-it-was)

[![Keep your trap shut, careless talk may cost American lives, 1941 US poster: Careless-talk security poster](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/keep-your-trap-shut-army-air-forces-1941.jpg)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/images/keep-your-trap-shut-army-air-forces-1941.jpg)

# Keep your trap shut, careless talk may cost American lives

Careless-talk security poster: a caricatured Japanese officer, with round glasses, buck teeth and a rising-sun cap badge, crawls out from under a giant mousetrap that has snapped shut on a pair of legs in boots. The pun on 'trap' and the caption tie loose talk to American deaths, a fear-appeal, with the enemy drawn as a caricature.

## Propaganda techniques used in this poster

[Fear appeal](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/fear-appeal/) [Name-calling](https://propagandaarchive.org/techniques/name-calling/)

## Text on the object

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

```
KEEP YOUR
TRAP SHUT
[signature: Ned Hilton]
[imprint: PUBLICATIONS SECTION
PUBLIC RELATIONS BRANCH
U. S. ARMY AIR FORCES]
CARELESS TALK MAY
COST AMERICAN LIVES
7B
```

[← Keep your Red Cross at his side. Give!](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/keep-your-red-cross-at-his-side-1941/) [Just by keeping well you can help win this war →](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/keeping-well-win-this-war-five-health-rules-1941/)

## More propaganda examples that use the same techniques

- [Miniature of Pope Urban II at the Council of Clermont, Les Passages d'outremer (BnF Fr. 5594, fol. 19r)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/passages-doutremer-council-of-clermont-colombe-1474/) (France · 1474 · Testimonial, Fear appeal). Content note: Medieval religious imagery and a French text describing alleged killings and captivity of eastern Christians, as used to argue for the First Crusade; the text is shown as written.
- [Anacoana fut pendue sans raison (engraving in Le miroir de la cruelle et horrible tyrannie espagnole)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/anacoana-hanged-miroir-tyrannie-espagnole-1620/) (Dutch Republic · 1620 · Fear appeal, Name-calling). Content note: Engraving of a hanged, bare-breasted Taino woman, burning huts and people being killed by Spanish soldiers.
- [Der Warner (broadsheet lampoon on the Jesuits after Breitenfeld and Rain)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/der-warner-anti-jesuit-broadsheet-1632/) (Holy Roman Empire · 1632 · Scapegoating, Fear appeal)
- [Sans-Culottes, feeding Europe with the Bread of Liberty (James Gillray)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/sans-culottes-bread-of-liberty-gillray-1793/) (Kingdom of Great Britain · Jan 12, 1793 · Fear appeal, Name-calling)
- [Proclamation de Sonthonax en créole, Cap-Français (Proclamation of Commissioner Sonthonax in Creole)](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/sonthonax-proclamation-creole-1793/) (France · Aug 29, 1793 · Fear appeal, Scapegoating). Content note: Colonial-era proclamation on slavery and emancipation in Saint-Domingue; speaks of slaves, whips and 'Nègues' in period terms.
- [Gazette of the United States, "The Jeffersoniad" no. VIII, 14 August 1800](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/gazette-us-jeffersoniad-1800/) (United States · Aug 14, 1800 · Name-calling, Fear appeal)
- [Tyrants Prostrate, Liberty Triumphant (pro-Polk cartoon on Dorr), 1844](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/tyrants-prostrate-liberty-triumphant-polk-1844/) (United States · 1844 · Name-calling, Fear appeal). Content note: Speech balloons contain anti-Catholic and nativist wording ('the ruins of Popery') in the mouths of the Whig figures, written by a Democratic cartoonist and shown unaltered.
- [Brolej Žemajčiaj! (Brothers Samogitians!): hand-painted broken-cross poster](https://propagandaarchive.org/collection/brolej-zemajciaj-broken-cross-1862/) (Russian Empire · 1862 · Fear appeal, Transfer)