Content note: Caricature of a Japanese officer with exaggerated yellow-green skin, fangs and glasses, and a mock-pidgin headline. This object is shown as it was published. Why
For Playee 'Hookey' thanks please! Every minute counts!
Industrial-plant poster from a machine-tool maker: a caricatured Japanese officer with yellow-green skin, large teeth, round goggles and a starred cap grins under mock pidgin text about 'Playee Hookey'. The slogan 'Every Minute Counts!' asks workers not to skip work. The caricature is the name-calling device; the threat is that absence helps the enemy.
Propaganda techniques used in this poster
- Date
- 1942
- Period
- Second World War
- Made by
- Kearney & Trecker Corporation
- 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
- Labor, War and the military, 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)
Kearney & Trecker Corporation. National Archives and Records Administration, RG 44, 44-PA-803 (NAID 514298).
Text on the object
for PLAYEE 'HOOKEY' Thanks Please! EVERY MINUTE COUNTS! KEARNEY & TRECKER CORPORATION COPYRIGHT, 1942, MANUEL ENGRAVING CO. & ART STUDIOS, INC., MILWAUKEE, WIS. LITHO IN U. S. OF A.
