Remember Me? I Was at Bataan (1943), an unnamed survivor asks for war bonds

Remember me? I was at Bataan is a 1943 war bond poster of the Treasury Department's War Savings Staff, signed Brook. A lean man in an open-collared shirt, hat in hand, kneels against green foliage in a dark painted portrait and speaks to the viewer before the order "Buy war bonds" (NAID 515292).

A question, a place, and a face

The poster speaks in the voice of the man in it. The archive describes a dark half-length painting of a lean man in an open-collared shirt, kneeling against green foliage with his hat in his hand. He asks one question and names one place.

Remember me? I was at Bataan

BUY WAR BONDS

[signature: Brook]

[imprint: U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE 1943-O-513139 WSS 778]

A witness without a name

The archive tags testimonial and fear appeal, and it calls the figure a survivor who vouches for the appeal. The sheet gives him no name and gives no detail of what happened at Bataan; it relies on the reader already knowing, and on the word alone to carry the weight. "Remember me?" is the hook.

The guilt is in the grammar. The man does not ask for help for himself. He asks to be remembered, and the next line converts remembering into a purchase. The record's purpose field reads "Fundraise," and its audience is "Domestic public."

What the Treasury asked

A war bond was a loan to the government. The Treasury's War Savings Staff ran the appeal, and the imprint adds WSS 778 after the Government Printing Office job number. The sheet does not claim that buying a bond would bring anyone back or change what happened at Bataan, and it does not say anything about the man's fate.

The sheet is in this site's war bonds poster gallery under the World War II war bonds hub. A Boy Died Last Night, from the same year, also asks for bonds in the name of a single serviceman, this one dead. Japs Execute Doolittle Men puts a headline about executed airmen over a caricature of Tojo for the payroll plan.