# Careless Matches Aid the Axis (1942), a Forest Service fire poster with a caricature

Careless matches aid the Axis is a 1942 forest-fire prevention poster of the U.S. Forest Service, Department of Agriculture. A grinning caricature of a Japanese soldier, with exaggerated teeth and round glasses, strikes a match in front of burning trees (NAID 514036).

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      Careless matches aid the Axis

      Careless Matches Aid the Axis (1942), a Forest Service fire poster with a caricature
      A 1942 U.S. Forest Service fire poster puts a grinning Japanese caricature with a match before burning trees: careless matches aid the Axis. NAID 514036.

## Techniques named on the archive record

TransferFear appeal
      Date1942Made byU.S. Forest Service, Department of AgricultureMediumPosterCountryUnited StatesRegimeRoosevelt AdministrationNARANAID 514036; Record Group 44SourceIdentified Openly sourced: the speaker is who they say they areSourceU.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Record Group 44, World War II Posters , retrieved October 4, 2026SourcePublic domain (U.S. government work) U.S. Forest Service, Department of Agriculture. National Archives and Records Administration, RG 44, 44-PA-557 (NAID 514036).
      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

  Careless matches aid the Axis is a 1942 forest-fire prevention poster of the U.S. Forest Service, Department of Agriculture. A grinning caricature of a Japanese soldier, with exaggerated teeth and round glasses, strikes a match in front of burning trees (NAID 514036).

## The figure with the match

Content note: the poster's central figure is a racial caricature, described here as the record describes it.

A federal land agency drew its arsonist as an ethnic cartoon. The archive describes a grinning Japanese soldier in a cap with a star, given exaggerated teeth and round glasses, holding a lit match. The background is orange, filled with burning trees. The text is two lines, with the imprints below.

careless matches aid the Axis

PREVENT FOREST FIRES!

[imprint:] FOREST SERVICE U S DEPARTMENT OF AGRICULTURE

[imprint:] U. S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE: 1942—O—466268

Transcription in the FRAME record, read from the image and not independently checked. Full record at propagandaarchive.org. NAID 514036, local id 44-PA-557, Record Group 44.

## The issuer

The imprint names the Forest Service of the U.S. Department of Agriculture, and the printing-office job number carries the year 1942. The record gives the audience as "Domestic public" and the purpose as "Warn or inform." The National Archives copy is in Record Group 44, listed as a public-domain government work. There is no artist's signature in the transcription and no print run in the record.

## What the caricature adds

Preventing forest fires was a sound request in any year, and the slogan alone makes a coherent wartime argument: carelessness at home helps the enemy. The archive tags transfer, because the hated figure is pasted onto an everyday habit, and fear appeal, because the trees burn behind him.

The figure is the problem. The sheet's own words name the Axis, a group of governments. The picture names a race. The careless camper who drops a match is an American at home; the poster draws him as a grinning Japanese face instead, so that the danger looks foreign. That substitution teaches the viewer to associate a fire with an ethnicity, and a civilian agency printed it. In the same year the government was removing people of Japanese ancestry, about two-thirds of them citizens, from the West Coast by order, as the Roosevelt administration essay sets out. The record does not show any link between this poster and that policy.

More sheets that used the same face are gathered on the anti-Japanese propaganda hub and its poster gallery. Save Your Scraps to Bomb the Japs, a private salvage poster of 1942, uses round glasses and protruding teeth too.

## Sources

- FRAME object record, Careless matches aid the Axis, 1942. U.S. Forest Service, Department of Agriculture. 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-557, NAID 514036, retrieved by the archive 4 October 2026.

Canonical: https://americanpropaganda.org/collection/careless-matches-aid-the-axis-forest-service-1942/