# Nap and Help a Jap, "Careless Carl" asleep beside his truck

Nap and help a Jap is an American wartime truck-maintenance poster filed with the 1943 sheets. Its "Careless Carl" dozes under a tree while his oil can and grease gun lie unused. No issuer or signature appears on the scan (NARA 515044).

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      Nap and Help a Jap: 'Careless Carl' Greases His Truck

      Nap and Help a Jap, "Careless Carl" asleep beside his truck
      "Nap and help a Jap": a wartime truck-care poster shows "Careless Carl" asleep by his grease gun. No issuer printed; NARA dates it 1941-1945. NARA 515044.

## Techniques named on the archive record

Name-callingIdentity fusion
      Date1943Made byU.S. wartime vehicle-maintenance and safety poster (issuer not named on the object); held in the OWI poster fileMediumPosterCountryUnited StatesRegimeRoosevelt AdministrationNARANARA 515044; Record Group 44SourceIdentified Openly sourced: the speaker is who they say they areSourceU.S. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA 515044, local id 44-PA-1385), Records of the Office of Government Reports, Record Group 44, series 'World War II Posters' , retrieved October 2, 2026SourcePublic 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

  Nap and help a Jap is an American wartime truck-maintenance poster filed with the 1943 sheets. Its "Careless Carl" dozes under a tree while his oil can and grease gun lie unused. No issuer or signature appears on the scan (NARA 515044).

## What the sheet prints

Content note: the slogan uses an ethnic slur for Japanese people; the quotations below keep the printed word.

The picture is of an American, not an enemy. A heavyset driver in blue overalls has fallen asleep against a tree, a straw in his mouth. His oil can and grease gun lie on the ground beside him, and his truck sits on the slope behind. The words are a rhyme and a nickname.

NAP and

help a JAP

"CARELESS CARL"

greases his truck

Transcription in the FRAME record, read from the image. Full record at propagandaarchive.org. NARA 515044, local id 44-PA-1385, Record Group 44.

## Who made it, and when

No issuer, imprint, or artist's signature appears on the scan. The archive lists the sheet as a vehicle-maintenance and safety poster with the issuer not named, held at the National Archives in the World War II Posters series of Record Group 44. The site files it under 1943, but the archive's own note says the date is undetermined and that NARA gives a range of 1941 to 1945. This page does not narrow that range.

## How it works

The archive tags two techniques: name-calling and identity fusion. The joke depends on the rhyme. "Nap" needs a partner, and the poster picked a slur. The second move is to fold an ordinary lapse into the war. A driver resting before he greases his truck is not shown doing anything worse than putting off a chore, yet the sheet says that delay helps the enemy.

Asking drivers to look after their trucks was a fair request, and the poster could have made it on its own terms. Instead it borrowed a racial insult for its hook, and it treated a dozing worker as a collaborator. Both choices were wrong, and the first was unnecessary. Nothing in the record says who saw the sheet or what it changed.

Missed work gets a fuller treatment in the War Production Board leaflet Days Off Cost Lives!, which lists the ordinary reasons workers missed shifts. For other sheets that printed the same slur, see All the Ear-Marks of a Sneaky Jap! and Save Your Scraps to Bomb the Japs, and the anti-Japanese propaganda hub, which says plainly what was wrong with that line of imagery.

## Sources

- FRAME object record, Nap and Help a Jap: 'Careless Carl' Greases His Truck. Issuer not named on the object; no imprint or signature found on the scan.

- U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Records of the Office of Government Reports, Record Group 44, World War II Posters, NARA 515044, local id 44-PA-1385, catalog record, retrieved by the archive 2 October 2026. Rights as recorded: public domain (U.S. publication without copyright notice; NARA "Unrestricted").

Canonical: https://americanpropaganda.org/collection/nap-and-help-a-jap-careless-carl-1943/