A shipyard crowd walks toward a crane between two ships, and one figure in the group is left as a white outline. Norman Kenyon signed this 1943 U.S. Maritime Commission recruiting poster, which asks "Are YOU missing from this picture?" and answers "TEAMWORK WINS" (NAID 513879).
A space cut out of the crowd
The design rests on one gap. In the archive's description, workers in hard hats walk toward a crane set between two ships, and among them is a single figure drawn as a white outline with nothing inside. The headline asks the reader whether that figure is them. The Ships for Victory emblem sits at lower right.
Are YOU missing
from this picture?
TEAMWORK WINS
UNITED STATES MARITIME COMMISSION
SHIPS FOR VICTORY
[signature: NORMAN KENYON]
[imprint: U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE 1943--O--545476]
[imprint: Additional copies may be obtained from the Division of Public Relations, U.S. Maritime Commission, Washington, D.C.]
Who printed it, and where to get more
The issuer is printed twice: once as the United States Maritime Commission with the Ships for Victory line, and again in the reorder note, which sends readers to the commission's Division of Public Relations in Washington. Norman Kenyon signed the art. The Government Printing Office number dates it to 1943. FRAME files the purpose as "Recruit" and the themes as "Labor, Home front."
The sheet gives no wage, no yard, no address for applying and no skill wanted. It recruits a feeling of belonging and leaves the practical steps to someone else.
Bandwagon, drawn literally
The archive tags bandwagon and identity fusion. Bandwagon usually works by numbers: everyone is doing it. Here it works by shape. The crowd is already complete except for one slot, and the slot is the reader's size.
A free labor market asks people to choose a job. This sheet asks them to notice they are missing. Both can lead to the same shipyard, and no one was ordered there by the poster. It is still worth seeing how the request is framed: the worker who stays away is drawn as an absence the team has to cover.
Two other labor sheets on this site take a different route. Women in the War uses a photograph of one worker at a task, and The More Women at Work the Sooner We Win! lists jobs. How labor appeals fit among the government's other wartime posters is covered in the Roosevelt administration essay.
Sources
- FRAME object record, Are You Missing from This Picture? Teamwork Wins, 1943. U.S. Maritime Commission, artwork signed Norman Kenyon. Rights as recorded: public domain (U.S. government work).
- U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Record Group 44, World War II Posters, 44-PA-420, NAID 513879, retrieved by the archive 4 October 2026.
