Content note: A wartime US cartoon showing Hitler and a Japanese soldier drawn in exaggerated racial caricature, with grinning faces, embracing a worker beside rows of war graves. This object is shown as it was published. Why
"Absence makes their hearts grow fonder"
A notice headed 'Defense Plant Absentee Roll' lists workers with Xs after their names, and the Xs turn into rows of grave crosses topped with helmets, while caricatures of Hitler and a Japanese soldier grin and embrace a worker on the left. The tell is fear-appeal: absenteeism is tied directly to battlefield deaths and to the Axis leaders, who are shown as the beneficiaries.
Propaganda techniques used in this cartoon
- Date
- 1943
- Period
- Second World War
- Made by
- Office of War Information (cartoon artwork; artist Charles Alston)
- Region
- North America
- Country
- United States
- Medium
- Cartoon
- Issuer type
- State
- Regime
- Roosevelt Administration
- Leader
- Franklin D. Roosevelt
- Audience
- Domestic public
- Purpose
- Mobilize or secure compliance
- Themes
- Home front, Labor, War and the military
- 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 (NARA), RG 208, Artworks and Mockups for Cartoons Promoting the War Effort (NAID 535594), retrieved October 3, 2026
- Rights
- Public domain (U.S. government work)
Office of War Information. National Archives and Records Administration, RG 208, 208-COM-94 (NAID 535635).
Text on the object
DEFENSE PLANT ABSENTEE ROLL TOM JONES XXX SAM JOHNSON XXXX BEN COHEN XX MIKE O'REILLY XXXXX LARS OLSEN XX HARRY SMITH XXXXX [faint:] JAMES THOMAS XX JOHN HOWARD LOUIS MAMAT XX ABRAHAM XX "ABSENCE MAKES THEIR HEARTS GROW FONDER" [signed] Alston for OWI
