# Jappy So-o-o Happy When This Happens to You (1943), a Navy Department driving-safety poster

"JAPPY SO-O-O HAPPY WHEN THIS HAPPENS TO YOU" runs beside a caricature labeled Tojo on this 1943 Navy Department Safety Poster signed Chuck Thorndike. Under the grinning face, a small drawing shows two cars colliding, and the advice is to watch the driver ahead, behind and around the corner (NARA 514676).

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      Jappy So-o-o Happy When This Happens to You (Navy Department Safety Poster)

      Jappy So-o-o Happy When This Happens to You (1943), a Navy Department driving-safety poster
      Chuck Thorndike's 1943 Navy Department Safety Poster sets "JAPPY SO-O-O HAPPY WHEN THIS HAPPENS TO YOU" by a caricature labeled Tojo. NARA 514676.

## Techniques named on the archive record

Name-callingTransfer
      Date1943Made byU.S. Navy Department (printed banner 'Navy Department Safety Poster'); artist signed Chuck ThorndikeMediumPosterCountryUnited StatesRegimeRoosevelt AdministrationNARANARA 514676SourceIdentified Openly sourced: the speaker is who they say they areSourceU.S. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA 514676, local id 44-PA-1140), via Wikimedia Commons , retrieved October 2, 2026SourcePublic domain (U.S. federal work; NARA-held; Commons tag PD-USGov-Treasury) U.S. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA 514676, 44-PA-1140)
      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

  "JAPPY SO-O-O HAPPY WHEN THIS HAPPENS TO YOU" runs beside a caricature labeled Tojo on this 1943 Navy Department Safety Poster signed Chuck Thorndike. Under the grinning face, a small drawing shows two cars colliding, and the advice is to watch the driver ahead, behind and around the corner (NARA 514676).

## A caricature over a car crash

Content note: the poster's first word is an ethnic slur, and its main figure is a racial caricature. Both are quoted and described as printed.

The main figure is a large caricature face. In the archive's description, the cap band reads "TOJO," and the face has thick round glasses, a toothbrush moustache and bared teeth. Beside it, the slogan is stacked one word to a line. Below, a small drawing shows two cars in a collision.

TOJO

JAPPY

SO-O-O

HAPPY

WHEN

THIS

HAPPENS

TO

YOU

WATCH OUT FOR THE DRIVER

AHEAD, THE DRIVER BEHIND

AND THE ONE AROUND THE

CORNER!

NAVY DEPARTMENT SAFETY POSTER

(Artist's signature, lower right: Chuck Thorndike)

Transcription in the FRAME record, read from the image and not independently checked. The archive notes that the National Archives catalog title reads "Happen" where the poster reads "Happens." Full record at propagandaarchive.org. NARA 514676, local id 44-PA-1140.

## A Navy banner, a signed artist

The printed banner names the Navy Department, and FRAME types the issuer as military. Chuck Thorndike signed the art. The archive's copy came through Wikimedia Commons from the National Archives, under the local id 44-PA-1140. The record lists the audience as "Domestic public" and the themes as home front, labor, and race and ethnicity. It does not say where the poster was hung or how many were printed.

## Safety advice wrapped in a slur

Set the face and the slogan aside and the poster gives sound advice: watch the driver ahead, the driver behind and the one around the corner. Nothing about that needed an enemy.

The face and slogan add one anyway. "JAPPY" is an ethnic slur, as the archive's content note says. The face carries the name Tojo, which the archive reads as the enemy leader, and it is drawn as a stereotype of a Japanese face. A crash at home becomes something that pleases him. The archive tags name-calling and transfer, and both are plain. A Navy Department poster about driving told its readers that the people of an enemy nation could be named with an insult and drawn as a type. That was wrong, and it was printed under a federal department's name.

Another sheet on this site that uses the same slur under a Navy name is Your Enemy the Jap, from the Industrial Incentive Division. For a plant-poster series built on one caricature, see the Tokio Kid page. The anti-Japanese WWII hub gathers related sheets, and its section on what was wrong sets out the site's reading.

## Sources

- FRAME object record, Jappy So-o-o Happy When This Happens to You (Navy Department Safety Poster), 1943. U.S. Navy Department; artist signed Chuck Thorndike.

- U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, NARA 514676, local id 44-PA-1140, via Wikimedia Commons, retrieved by the archive 2 October 2026. Rights as recorded: public domain (U.S. federal work; NARA-held; Commons tag PD-USGov-Treasury).

Canonical: https://americanpropaganda.org/collection/jappy-so-o-o-happy-navy-safety-poster-1943/