# If you ask me, it's HOME they're fighting for! (1943), Crosley's grandmother advertisement

A white-haired woman knits in this 1943 Crosley Corporation advertisement, which says it appears in The Saturday Evening Post issue of July 10. Her quoted speech covers four wars in one family and ends with "no foot-prints of the Germans or Japs" at her grandson's door, before the company explains its switch to radar and military radios (NAID 514585).

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- If you ask me, it's HOME they're fighting for! (1943), Crosley's grandmother advertisement

      If you ask me, it's HOME they're fighting for!

      If you ask me, it's HOME they're fighting for! (1943), Crosley's grandmother advertisement
      A 1943 Crosley advertisement for The Saturday Evening Post: a grandmother on four family wars, then the firm's switch to radar. NAID 514585.

## Techniques named on the archive record

Plain folksTransfer
      Date1943Made byThe Crosley Corporation (Cincinnati, Ohio, and Richmond, Indiana); artist initialled C KMediumAdvertisementCountryUnited StatesRegimeRoosevelt AdministrationNARANAID 514585; 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) The Crosley Corporation. National Archives and Records Administration, RG 44, 44-PA-1061 (NAID 514585).
      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 white-haired woman knits in this 1943 Crosley Corporation advertisement, which says it appears in The Saturday Evening Post issue of July 10. Her quoted speech covers four wars in one family and ends with "no foot-prints of the Germans or Japs" at her grandson's door, before the company explains its switch to radar and military radios (NAID 514585).

## A grandmother's monologue

Content note: the quoted speech uses the slur "Japs," as printed.

The archive describes a white-haired woman in a lace collar, knitting, drawn above a long quotation in her voice. The artist initialed it C K.

This advertisement appears in the SATURDAY EVENING POST issue of July 10.

"If you ask me, it's HOME they're fighting for!"

"You can take my word for it—and this is the fourth war I've lived through. I was just running around, knee-high to a tad-pole, when my father came home in '65. But I remember he said then what my husband said in '98 and what my boy said in '18. [...]

"And now it's my grand-son's turn [...] He's thinking about getting back HOME and he's fighting so that it will be just like it was when he left it—with no foot-prints of the Germans or Japs around his front door!"

Transcription in the FRAME record, read from the image and not independently checked. Full record at propagandaarchive.org. NAID 514585, local id 44-PA-1061, Record Group 44.

## What Crosley was selling

The advertiser is The Crosley Corporation of Cincinnati, Ohio, and Richmond, Indiana. FRAME types it a corporation and gives the purpose as "Reassure." The copy lists what the company made before the war: radios, phonographs, refrigerators, ranges, washers and ironers. It says "these Crosley peacetime products have been set aside" for military radios, radar and electronic devices. Then it promises that when peace comes Crosley "will make even finer radios," refrigerators with the patented Shelvador, and the Crosley Car. It closes on the radio station WLW and a note that more than 8,000 Crosley workers had earned the 10% War Bond Flag.

The goods it names are promised for when peace comes, so the advertisement sells a name to remember.

## Plain folks and a long memory

The archive tags plain folks and transfer. The grandmother's speech counts four wars in her family: her father in '65, her husband in '98, her son in '18, and now her grandson. Her line about home gives the company's war production a kitchen-table warmth.

The slur sits in the warmest sentence of the advertisement. A national advertiser put "Japs" in a grandmother's mouth, beside the plain "Germans." It was part of paid advertising copy, not a hasty caption.

The same magazine appears on this site as an advertiser in its own right: Captain Joe Foss USMC bags 26 Jap Zeros. Alcoa's Global Map for Global War and Global Peace is another 1943 company piece built on war work. The war bonds hub covers industry's part in the bond drives.

## Sources

- FRAME object record, If you ask me, it's HOME they're fighting for!, 1943. The Crosley Corporation (Cincinnati, Ohio, and Richmond, Indiana); artist initialled C K. 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-1061, NAID 514585, retrieved by the archive 4 October 2026.

Canonical: https://americanpropaganda.org/collection/if-you-ask-me-its-home-crosley-1943/