# "Not behind the plow" (1943), an Army photo sheet on where the metal goes

"Not behind the plow"... Your metals are in the Army ... Everywhere is a 1943 U.S. Army official poster of five captioned photographs, from an amphibious truck in Sicily to huts in Iceland, each tied to nonferrous metal. One caption uses the slurs "Jap" and "Nips" (NAID 515084).

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      “Not behind the plow”... Your metals are in the Army ... Everywhere

      "Not behind the plow" (1943), an Army photo sheet on where the metal goes
      A 1943 Army photo poster, "Not behind the plow," captions five pictures with the metal each needs; one reads "MAYBE ONE OF THESE GOT A JAP." NAID 515084.

## Techniques named on the archive record

TestimonialCard stacking
      Date1943Made byU.S. ArmyMediumPosterCountryUnited StatesRegimeRoosevelt AdministrationNARANAID 515084; Record Group 44SourceIdentified Openly sourced: the speaker is who they say they areSourceU.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Record Group 44, World War II Posters , retrieved October 4, 2026SourcePublic domain (U.S. government work) U.S. Army. National Archives and Records Administration, RG 44, 44-PA-1420 (NAID 515084).
      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

  "Not behind the plow"... Your metals are in the Army ... Everywhere is a 1943 U.S. Army official poster of five captioned photographs, from an amphibious truck in Sicily to huts in Iceland, each tied to nonferrous metal. One caption uses the slurs "Jap" and "Nips" (NAID 515084).

## Five photographs and their captions

Content note: one caption uses two ethnic slurs for Japanese people. They are quoted as printed.

This U.S. Army official poster is built from photographs. The archive lists five photographs: the "Duck" amphibious truck in Sicily, a soldier holding brass shells, a Lend-Lease locomotive, naval mines, and Army huts in Iceland. Each caption says what the metal does there.

“NOT BEHIND THE PLOW”...

Your METALS are in the Army ... Everywhere

[...]

“MAYBE ONE OF THESE GOT A JAP.” These brass shells, fired from an American bomber during a raid in the Aleutians, represent two seconds of actual combat. It takes plenty of metal to knock off Nips.

FAST FREIGHT COMING UP! America sends Lend-Lease locomotive to speed food, ammunition and other necessities for Russia's advancing, lengthening supply lines. 4,860 lbs. of nonferrous metals are needed to make an engine and tender.

[...]

U.S. ARMY OFFICIAL POSTER

Transcription in the FRAME record, cut where marked. Imprint: U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE: 1943 O-[illegible]; a sign in one photograph reads PORTO EMPEDOCLE. Full record at propagandaarchive.org. NAID 515084, local id 44-PA-1420, Record Group 44.

## The case it makes, and leaves out

The archive tags card stacking and testimonial. The captions offer figures, such as the weight of nonferrous metal in a locomotive and tender, and every photograph is chosen to show metal in use. Nothing on the sheet weighs a cost or a competing need, which is what card stacking means. The quoted headline "Not behind the plow" is never explained on the poster, and the record does not say what it answers.

The sheet's audience field is "Domestic public" and its purpose is to "Mobilize or secure compliance." It asks civilians to see the metal they give up as a share in the fighting. That is a fair request in a war, made with evidence of a kind.

## The caption with the slurs

Four of the five captions stay with machines and places. The shell caption does not. It sets a slur inside quotation marks and then repeats the point in the Army's own voice with a second slur. An official poster had no need for either word to make its case about brass. The enemy in that caption is named by ancestry.

The same year's Help Smash Hitler Now! also asks the home front for metal on the Army's behalf. The War Production Board's America Needs Your Scrap Rubber uses weights the same way without photographs. Sheets that named the Japanese enemy by slur are gathered on the anti-Japanese propaganda hub.

## Sources

- FRAME object record, “Not behind the plow”... Your metals are in the Army ... Everywhere, 1943. U.S. Army official poster.

- U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Record Group 44, World War II Posters, 44-PA-1420, NAID 515084, retrieved by the archive 4 October 2026. Rights as recorded: public domain (U.S. government work).

Canonical: https://americanpropaganda.org/collection/not-behind-the-plow-your-metals-are-in-the-army-1943/