# Ouch! The Japs Don't Like Mosquitoes (1942), a PT-boat recruiting poster

Ouch! The Japs don't like mosquitoes is a 1942 U.S. Navy recruiting poster, No. 441 of the Bureau of Naval Personnel. A speech bubble beside a portrait of a decorated lieutenant and a speeding PT boat carries the slur, and a small cartoon shows a figure in spectacles running from a mosquito.

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      Ouch! The Japs Don't Like Mosquitoes

      Ouch! The Japs Don't Like Mosquitoes (1942), a PT-boat recruiting poster
      "Ouch! The Japs don't like mosquitoes": a 1942 Navy recruiting poster, No. 441, sells PT-boat service with a slur and a cartoon. Northwestern University

## Techniques named on the archive record

Name-callingTransfer
      Date1942Made byU.S. Navy, Bureau of Naval Personnel (recruiting poster no. 441, printed by the U.S. Government Printing Office)MediumPosterCountryUnited StatesRegimeRoosevelt AdministrationSourceIdentified Openly sourced: the speaker is who they say they areSourceNorthwestern University Libraries, World War II Poster Collection (object no. IX.30) , retrieved October 2, 2026SourcePublic domain (U.S. government publication; Northwestern: No Copyright - United States) Northwestern University Libraries, World War II Poster Collection (Government & Geographic Information Collection); the Libraries ask that users cite the item URL and Northwestern University Libraries.
      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

  Ouch! The Japs don't like mosquitoes is a 1942 U.S. Navy recruiting poster, No. 441 of the Bureau of Naval Personnel. A speech bubble beside a portrait of a decorated lieutenant and a speeding PT boat carries the slur, and a small cartoon shows a figure in spectacles running from a mosquito.

## What is on the sheet

The third word in the speech bubble is a slur for Japanese people, and the cartoon inside the bubble mocks the enemy. This page quotes both as printed because they are the record.

The layout pairs a hero with a joke. According to the archive, a portrait of a lieutenant wearing ribbons sits beside a PT boat moving fast, and a speech bubble holds the text. In the bubble a small cartoon shows a spectacled figure running from a mosquito that wears a cap. The mosquito is the boat.

Ouch! The Japs don't like mosquitoes —

especially the PT variety, with men like Lieutenant Bulkeley

at the wheel and a picked crew shooting "stingers" into the

sides of their warships and merchantmen.

If you like to be where the attack starts — there's a place for

you right now in the U. S. Navy. Go to your nearest Navy

Recruiting Station today!

No. 441

NRB—32682—6-13-42—10M.

Transcription in the FRAME record, read from the image and not independently checked. The record notes that "you" is italic in the original and that a pencil library note at lower right is not transcribed. Full record at propagandaarchive.org. Northwestern University Libraries, World War II Poster Collection, object IX.30.

## Who printed it

The maker line is the U.S. Navy's Bureau of Naval Personnel, recruiting poster No. 441, printed by the Government Printing Office. The code line at the foot reads NRB—32682—6-13-42—10M; the record does not decode it, and neither does this page. The copy comes from Northwestern University Libraries, not the National Archives, so there is no NAID. The record lists the issuer type as military, the purpose as "Recruit," and the themes as war and the military, and race and ethnicity.

## The slur and the sales pitch

The text names one man, Lieutenant Bulkeley, as the kind of officer at the wheel, and the archive notes that the portrait and ribbons lend the recruiting appeal the officer's standing. Whether the portrait is Bulkeley is not stated, so this page does not assume it. The pitch itself is ordinary recruiting: dangerous work, a picked crew, and the chance to be "where the attack starts."

The archive tags name-calling, and the slur is why. The sentence is aimed at an enemy navy's "warships and merchantmen," a military target. The word chosen for the people aboard is an ethnic insult, and the cartoon draws an enemy figure in spectacles running from an insect. A recruiter for the armed service of a republic did not need either one to describe PT boats. The Navy printed both.

Other sheets that used the same vocabulary are on the anti-Japanese propaganda hub and in its poster gallery. Alaska - Death-Trap for the Jap was made for the Navy's Thirteenth Naval District the same year. The Roosevelt administration essay separates sheets aimed at a race from sheets aimed at a regime.

## Sources

- FRAME object record, Ouch! The Japs Don't Like Mosquitoes, 1942. U.S. Navy, Bureau of Naval Personnel (recruiting poster no. 441, printed by the U.S. Government Printing Office). Rights as recorded: public domain (U.S. government publication; Northwestern: No Copyright - United States).

- Northwestern University Libraries, World War II Poster Collection (Government & Geographic Information Collection), object no. IX.30, item record, retrieved by the archive 2 October 2026.

Canonical: https://americanpropaganda.org/collection/ouch-the-japs-dont-like-mosquitoes-1942/