More toolie you crackie, more happy jappie is a plant poster of the Albert H. Weinbrenner Co. of Milwaukee, catalogued at 1941 and copyrighted by Mandel Engraving Co. A caricatured Japanese soldier drools among broken cutting tools above mock-pidgin text and the employee prize slogan "Nations Fall When Workers Stall" (NAID 515023).
The poster prints a slur in mock pidgin
Content note: the headline uses an ethnic slur for Japanese people, written in a mocking imitation of broken English, and the picture is a racial caricature. They are quoted and described as the archive records them.
The archive describes a yellow-skinned caricature of a Japanese soldier in a cap with a star badge, drawn with exaggerated teeth and a drooling mouth. Broken cutting tools lie around him. The words are few.
MORE TOOLIE
YOU CRACKIE
More Happy Jappie
Nations Fall When Workers Stall
EMPLOYEE PRIZE WINNING SLOGAN
ALBERT H. WEINBRENNER CO. MILWAUKEE ★ MARSHFIELD ★ MERRILL ★ ANTIGO
[imprint: COPYRIGHT, 194[illegible], MANDEL ENGRAVING CO. & ART STUDIOS, INC., MILWAUKEE, WIS.]
[imprint: LITHO IN U. S. OF A.]
A Milwaukee company issued it as a plant poster
The issuer is a company, the Albert H. Weinbrenner Co., with four towns, Milwaukee first, in its footer. The archive calls it a company-sponsored plant poster. The copyright line names a Milwaukee engraving firm, and the last digit of its year is illegible, so the 1941 date is the catalog's. No federal office appears on the sheet. The archive's rights line still records it as a U.S. government work, without explaining why.
One line is labelled "EMPLOYEE PRIZE WINNING SLOGAN." The archive reads that label as belonging to "Nations Fall When Workers Stall." The record does not say who wrote the pidgin headline or chose the drawing.
The slur adds nothing to the tool-care message
The archive tags name-calling, for the slur, the pidgin and the caricature, and fear appeal, for the warning that broken tools help the enemy. The request underneath is ordinary: take care of your tools. The prize slogan already makes the point without naming any people. The headline adds a mocking voice and an insult aimed at an ancestry, and the drawing gives that insult a face.
That is wrong. The enemy was a state and its armed forces; the poster makes the target a people, and the line it draws is ancestry, the same line the 1942 exclusion order drew. The record does not show what effect this sheet had. The Roosevelt administration essay notes that not every sheet aimed at the Japanese came from the government; this one came from a private employer. Other company sheets in the same vein: Save Your Scraps to Bomb the Japs, from Seeburg, and Jap Trap, from Douglas. The anti-Japanese propaganda hub gathers the rest.
Sources
- FRAME object record, More toolie you crackie, more happy jappie, 1941. Albert H. Weinbrenner Co. (Mandel Engraving Co. & Art Studios). 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-1369, NAID 515023, retrieved by the archive 4 October 2026.
