# A Douglas conservation poster called Jap Trap

"Jap Trap" is a 1942 material-conservation poster by an artist signed Campbell for Douglas Aircraft Company, Inc. The title is the sheet's slur, and the picture is a rat in a rising-sun cap caught in a trap marked Material Conservation (NARA 515862).

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      "Jap Trap": Material Conservation (Douglas Aircraft poster)

      A Douglas conservation poster called Jap Trap
      Douglas Aircraft's 1942 "Jap Trap" poster, artist Campbell, NARA 515862. Conservation slogan paired with a rat caricature. Slur quoted, not reused as a

## Techniques named on the archive record

Name-calling
      Date1942Made byDouglas Aircraft Company, Inc., material conservation program (poster artist signed Campbell)MediumPosterCountryUnited StatesRegimeRoosevelt AdministrationNARANARA 515862SourceIdentified Openly sourced: the speaker is who they say they areSourceU.S. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA 515862, local id 44-PA-2156), via Wikimedia Commons , retrieved October 2, 2026SourcePublic domain in the US (published 1942 without a copyright notice); NARA: No Copyright - United States U.S. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA 515862, 44-PA-2156)
      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

  "Jap Trap" is a 1942 material-conservation poster by an artist signed Campbell for Douglas Aircraft Company, Inc. The title is the sheet's slur, and the picture is a rat in a rising-sun cap caught in a trap marked Material Conservation (NARA 515862).

## What the sheet said

MATERIAL CONSERVATION

"JAP TRAP"

One of a series designed by Douglas Aircraft Company, Inc., under its material conservation program.

Transcription in the FRAME record. A faint signature at the upper right is read there as Campbell. Full record at propagandaarchive.org. NARA 515862, local id 44-PA-2156.

Campbell is also the signed artist on the Tokio Kid mishap sheet. This poster is a different series: conservation, not the Kid. The picture, in the archive's description, is a rat in round glasses with a rising-sun cap coming off, jaws of a mousetrap around it.

## What it got wrong

Saving aluminum is a shop rule. Drawing the enemy as vermin is a different act. The rule can survive without the animal. The animal cannot survive as a description of Japanese people, or of Japanese Americans, or even of the Japanese state, which was a government with a navy, not a rodent. The title puts the slur in quotation marks on the sheet itself. Those marks do not make it a quotation from Tokyo. They make it Douglas's caption.

More Douglas and Treasury sheets that use the same vocabulary are in the US anti-Japanese posters gallery, with the identifier the archive prints on each one.

## Sources

- FRAME object record, "Jap Trap": Material Conservation, 1942. Douglas Aircraft Company, Inc. NARA 515862, local id 44-PA-2156, via Wikimedia Commons, retrieved by the archive October 2, 2026. Rights as recorded: public domain in the US (published 1942 without a copyright notice); NARA: No Copyright - United States.

Canonical: https://americanpropaganda.org/collection/jap-trap-douglas-material-conservation-1942/