# Japan's Life Line, a 1944 US leaflet that draws the supply route being cut

Japan's Life Line is leaflet 10-J-1 from the Psychological Warfare Branch of U.S. Army Forces, Pacific, dated 1944. Two officers in American service dress haul on a rope that severs a shipping lane from Southeast Asia's oil, rubber and tin to Japan, under the Japanese title "Crisis of the life line."

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      Japan's Life Line (leaflet 10-J-1, MacArthur and Nimitz cutting the supply lines)

      Japan's Life Line, a 1944 US leaflet that draws the supply route being cut
      US leaflet 10-J-1 (1944) for Japanese troops: two American officers cut the lane carrying oil, rubber and tin to Japan under "Crisis of the life line."

## Techniques named on the archive record

Fear appeal
      Date1944Made byU.S. Army Forces, Pacific, Psychological Warfare BranchMediumLeafletCountryUnited StatesRegimeRoosevelt AdministrationSourceIdentified Openly sourced: the speaker is who they say they areSourceLibrary of Congress , retrieved October 2, 2026SourcePublic domain (U.S. government work; LOC: No known restrictions on publication) U.S. Army Forces, Pacific, Psychological Warfare Branch; Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division, LOT 8093.
      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

  Japan's Life Line is leaflet 10-J-1 from the Psychological Warfare Branch of U.S. Army Forces, Pacific, dated 1944. Two officers in American service dress haul on a rope that severs a shipping lane from Southeast Asia's oil, rubber and tin to Japan, under the Japanese title "Crisis of the life line."

## The map

The leaflet is a picture map. A pale shipping lane runs from the oil derricks and the rubber and tin stores of Southeast Asia up to Japan, with ships strung along it. Two officers in American service dress pull on a rope that cuts across the lane. One stands on the Philippines and the other on the deck of an aircraft carrier. The archive's catalog title identifies the two as MacArthur and Nimitz; the face of the leaflet, as transcribed, does not name them.

生命線の危機

日本

支那

仏印

マレイ半島

フィリッピン諸島

ボルネオ島

セレベス島

Transcription in the FRAME record. Full record at propagandaarchive.org. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, LOT 8093.

The archive gives an English version and labels it a machine translation by Claude, not verified by a fluent reader: "Crisis of the life line," then the map labels Japan, China (Shina), French Indochina, Malay Peninsula, Philippine Islands, Borneo, and Celebes. It notes that the Borneo label is hard to read. The back of the leaflet is not on the archive's image and is not transcribed; the archive points to a separate Library of Congress item, 2008676387, that holds a typed English translation of it.

## Who made it, and for whom

The issuer is the Psychological Warfare Branch of U.S. Army Forces, Pacific. The archive lists the audience as enemy forces. The code 10-J-1 comes from the catalog title. The record gives no print run and no date or place of distribution.

## A threat you can check on a map

The record's single tag is fear appeal. The fear is specific: the fuel and raw materials that reached Japan by sea are shown as about to stop. The words on its face are a title and place names. Its argument is about logistics.

That is a cleaner kind of wartime persuasion than the home-front sheet linked at the end of this page. It speaks to soldiers as people who can read a map and think about what a cut supply line means for them. Whether the claim was true at the moment a given soldier picked it up is a separate question, and the record does not settle it. The leaflet does not ask him to hate anyone. It asks him to draw a conclusion.

Other Japanese-language leaflets on this site: Yesterday's Enemy Is Today's Friend, from the same branch; the air-raid advance notice; and the 1945 surrender pass I Cease Resistance. A contrast from the home front, aimed at Americans, is the Army's "Stay on the Job Until Every Murdering Jap Is Wiped Out!"

## Sources

- FRAME object record, Japan's Life Line (leaflet 10-J-1, MacArthur and Nimitz cutting the supply lines), 1944. U.S. Army Forces, Pacific, Psychological Warfare Branch. English translation in the record: machine translation by Claude, not verified by a fluent reader.

- Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division, LOT 8093, loc.gov/item/2008676382, retrieved by the archive 2 October 2026. Rights as recorded: public domain (U.S. government work; LOC: no known restrictions on publication).

Canonical: https://americanpropaganda.org/collection/japans-life-line-leaflet-1944/