U.N. Day Poster #13: UN Technical Assistance Is Sometimes Extremely Simple (Japanese poster distributed in Asia)
A photograph of a man in a field holding a long-handled scythe blade and a knife. Japanese text says UN technical assistance is sometimes very simple, such as advice to replace the sickle with the scythe, that small changes bring great progress, cites the scythe in Ethiopia and the plough and row-sowing in Afghanistan, and states that the harvest became five times larger. The tell is card-stacking: one or two chosen examples and an unsourced fivefold figure stand for the programme as a whole.
Propaganda techniques used in this poster
- Date
- September 14, 1953
- Period
- Cold War
- Made by
- U.S. Information Agency (predecessor: State Department International Information and Educational Exchange Program), Propaganda Posters Distributed in Asia series
- Region
- North America
- Country
- United States
- Medium
- Poster
- Issuer type
- State
- Regime
- Eisenhower Administration
- Leader
- Dwight D. Eisenhower
- Audience
- Foreign public
- Purpose
- Persuade or win support
- Themes
- Economy and finance, Science and technology
- Event
- Cold War
- Source
- Unidentified Source blurred: contractors, cutouts, buried disclosure
- Source
- U.S. National Archives (NARA), Record Group 306, Propaganda Posters Distributed in Asia, retrieved October 3, 2026
- Rights
- Public domain (U.S. government work; NARA RG 306)
U.S. Information Agency / Department of State, c. 1953. National Archives, Record Group 306 (NAID 5730115, 306-PPA-215).
Text on the object
国連の技術援助は極めて簡単な場合もある。例えば小鎌を大鎌に取換える勧告などがそれである。 ごく簡単な変化から、大きな進歩が生れる。エチオピアに於ける大鎌の紹介、アフガニスタンに於ける鋤並びに條播の紹介等が、その好例である。この改良により、収穫は五倍となつた。 13
UN technical assistance is sometimes extremely simple. Advice to replace the sickle with the scythe, for example, is of this kind. From very simple changes, great progress is born. The introduction of the scythe in Ethiopia and of the plough and row-sowing in Afghanistan are good examples. Through this improvement the harvest became five times as large. 13
The character read as 鋤 in the Afghanistan sentence is small and may be a variant; reading uncertain.
