American Propaganda
Japs Execute Doolittle Men. We'll Pay You Back Tojo, 1943 US poster: A torn newspaper headline, 'Japs Execute Doolittle Men'

Japs Execute Doolittle Men. We'll Pay You Back Tojo

Japs Execute Doolittle Men, a 1943 payroll-savings sheet

1943 Pay Roll Savings poster using the Doolittle execution headline and a Tojo caricature. NARA 513574. Headline quoted as printed.

Techniques named on the archive record

Name-callingOutrage bait
Date
1943
Made by
Poster for the Pay Roll Savings Plan (issuer not named on the object); held in the OWI poster file
Medium
Poster
Country
United States
Regime
Roosevelt Administration
NARA
NARA 513574; Record Group 44
Source
Identified Openly sourced: the speaker is who they say they are
Source
U.S. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA 513574, local id 44-PA-126), Records of the Office of Government Reports, Record Group 44, series 'World War II Posters' , retrieved October 2, 2026
Source
Public domain (U.S. publication without copyright notice; NARA 'Unrestricted') U.S. National Archives and Records Administration

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

Japs Execute Doolittle Men is a 1943 poster for the Pay Roll Savings Plan, held in the Office of War Information poster file, with the issuer not named on the object. It puts a torn headline over a caricature of Tojo and asks buyers to "pay you back" through the plan (NARA 513574).

What the sheet said

JAPS EXECUTE DOOLITTLE MEN

WE'LL PAY YOU BACK TOJO

Through the Pay Roll Savings Plan if it takes our last dime!

The archive describes a torn newspaper headline above a caricature it identifies as Tojo, struck by a fist in a star-spangled sleeve. The issuer is "not named on the object." The file is the OWI poster file. That is a holding place, not a signature.

News, then the ask

The execution of captured airmen was a reported wartime atrocity. A poster may cite it. This one spends the citation on a payroll deduction. The constitutional point is not that bond drives are illegal. They are voluntary on paper, and a voluntary loan to one's own government is a legitimate way to fund a declared war. The point is the substitution: grief and a slur become the reason to sign the card. A reader can hold both facts. The crime, if the news was true, was the execution. The caricature is an extra, and it paints a race onto a man the headline already named.

Other sheets that make the same move are in the gallery.

Sources

  • FRAME object record, Japs Execute Doolittle Men. We'll Pay You Back Tojo, 1943. NARA 513574, local id 44-PA-126, Records of the Office of Government Reports, Record Group 44. Rights as recorded: public domain (U.S. publication without copyright notice; NARA "Unrestricted").