Content note: Racial caricature of a fanged Japanese figure with a knife, ethnic slur ('Jap') and mock-pidgin speech. This object is shown as it was published. Why
Tokio Kid Say: Rivets on Floor (Douglas Aircraft poster no. 812)
A photographed tabletop scene in modelled figures: a grinning, fanged Japanese caricature in a rising-sun cap creeps from behind a wall with a knife in one hand and a sack of dropped rivets in the other, while two workers fit a wheel part. His speech reads 'Tokio Kid say - rivets on floor gone to scrap making victory in bag for Jap.' Dropped rivets are staged as loot for the enemy.
- Date
- 1942
- Period
- Second World War
- Made by
- Douglas Aircraft Company, Inc., Santa Monica ('Tokio Kid' plant-poster series)
- Region
- North America
- Country
- United States
- Medium
- Poster
- Issuer type
- Corporation
- Regime
- Roosevelt Administration
- Leader
- Franklin D. Roosevelt
- Audience
- Domestic public
- Themes
- Labor, Home front, Race and ethnicity
- Event
- World War II
- Techniques
- Name-callingTransfer
- 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 (NARA 533957, local id 179-WP-99), via Wikimedia Commons, retrieved October 2, 2026
- Rights
- Public domain in the US (published 1942 without a copyright notice); NARA: No Copyright - United States
U.S. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA 533957, 179-WP-99)
Text on the object
TOKIO KID SAY- RIVETS ON FLOOR GONE TO SCRAP MAKING VICTORY IN BAG FOR JAP THANK YOU DOUGLAS AIRCRAFT CO., INC., SANTA MONICA, CALIF., U.S.A. POSTER NO. 812
The credit line and poster number are in small print along the bottom edge.
