# Ceiling Zero: Jim Berryman's peace dove among the A-bomb headlines of June 1953 A Washington Evening Star cartoon by Jim Berryman, dated 9 June 1953. A dove marked "Peace" with an olive branch flies into a gale of newspaper headlines, one of them "U.S. running out of storage space for A-bombs." Held in the Senate's Berryman collection at the National Archives (NAID 5743178). - Home - Archive - Ceiling Zero: Jim Berryman's peace dove among the A-bomb headlines of June 1953 Ceiling Zero Ceiling Zero: Jim Berryman's peace dove among the A-bomb headlines of June 1953 Jim Berryman's June 1953 cartoon Ceiling Zero sends a peace dove through headlines on Korea, bombers and "storage space for A-bombs." NARA NAID 5743178. ## Techniques named on the archive record Card stackingFear appeal DateJune 9, 1953Made byWashington Evening Star (cartoonist Jim Berryman)MediumCartoonCountryUnited StatesRegimeEisenhower AdministrationNARANAID 5730852; NAID 5743178SourceIdentified Openly sourced: the speaker is who they say they areSourceU.S. National Archives (NARA), Records of the U.S. Senate, Jim Berryman Political Cartoons (NAID 5730852) , retrieved October 3, 2026SourcePublic domain (U.S. government work) Jim Berryman, Washington Evening Star. National Archives and Records Administration, Records of the U.S. Senate, 5743178 (NAID 5743178). Object, image, and catalog record from the FRAME archive. Text on this page is CC BY 4.0. Image rights are as the archive records. Full record at propagandaarchive.org A Washington Evening Star cartoon by Jim Berryman, dated 9 June 1953. A dove marked "Peace" with an olive branch flies into a gale of newspaper headlines, one of them "U.S. running out of storage space for A-bombs." Held in the Senate's Berryman collection at the National Archives (NAID 5743178). ## What the cartoon shows One small bird and a sky full of paper. The dove, labelled, holds its olive branch and flies head-on into the wind. Every scrap blowing at it is a headline, lettered so the reader can read each one. PEACE EISENHOWER LETTER FALLS ON DEAF EARS U.S. RUNNING OUT OF STORAGE SPACE FOR A-BOMBS SYNGMAN RHEE REJECTS TRUCE EXPLOSIONS ROCK SEOUL AIR FORCE CONTROVERSY CONTINUES RADFORD SAYS NAVY WILL NOT RELAX PACIFIC PATROLS 45 B-47's CROSS ATLANTC IN 5½ HOURS Labels as transcribed by FRAME, line breaks joined; "ATLANTC" is the cartoon's spelling. Full record at propagandaarchive.org. NAID 5743178, in the series Jim Berryman Political Cartoons (NAID 5730852). ## Who drew it and where it is kept Jim Berryman drew it for the Washington Evening Star, and the original is in the Records of the U.S. Senate at the National Archives. The archive's rights line records it as a public-domain government work. That describes where the drawing is held. Berryman drew for a privately owned newspaper, not for the government. ## How to read it FRAME tags it card stacking and fear appeal. The headlines are chosen to make one point, that peace was flying into weather, and each of them is about refusal, explosion, rivalry, or reach. Syngman Rhee rejecting a truce, explosions in Seoul, a letter from the President that went unheeded, forty-five B-47 bombers crossing the Atlantic in hours, and, in the middle, a stock of atomic bombs said to be outgrowing its storage. That middle headline is the reason the cartoon belongs with the atomic-age material. In 1953 a cartoonist for a Washington evening paper could letter a headline saying the United States was running out of storage space for A-bombs and set it beside a dove without anyone's permission. The cartoon does not argue for or against the weapons. It says the news of that week made peace hard to see. The cartoon does not say which letter, which controversy, or whose storage report, and neither does the FRAME record, so they stay unnamed here. For how the government itself presented the atom to the public in these years, see Survival Under Atomic Attack and the civil defense and atomic age hub. ## Sources - FRAME object record, Ceiling Zero, 9 June 1953. Jim Berryman, Washington Evening Star. - U.S. National Archives, Records of the U.S. Senate, Jim Berryman Political Cartoons (series NAID 5730852), item NAID 5743178, catalog.archives.gov, retrieved by the archive 3 October 2026. Rights as recorded: public domain (U.S. government work). Canonical: https://americanpropaganda.org/collection/berryman-ceiling-zero-1953/