So the Jap's a Snap? I Can't See It (1944), an Army veteran's warning

So the Jap's a snap? I can't see it is a 1944 U.S. Army official poster, ISD No. 207. A decorated soldier in dark glasses speaks the headline, which uses an ethnic slur, to answer anyone who thought the war against Japan would be easy (NARA 515443).

A soldier with ribbons and a two-line answer

Content note: the headline uses an ethnic slur for Japanese people. It is quoted here as the Army printed it.

The picture is a single figure. FRAME describes a decorated soldier in dark glasses, with what appears to be the handle of a cane at the lower left. He is the speaker of the headline. The question and the reply are the whole text, apart from the Army's label, the poster number and a small printing imprint.

U. S. ARMY OFFICIAL POSTER

SO THE JAP'S A SNAP?

I CAN'T SEE IT

ISD No. 207

Who numbered and filed it

The archive credits the sheet to the U.S. Army, Information Service Division, which numbered it 207. The National Archives holds it in Record Group 44, the records of the Office of Government Reports, in the series World War II Posters. FRAME lists the audience as "Domestic public" and the purpose as "Mobilize or secure compliance". It tags two techniques: testimonial and name-calling.

The archive's reading is that the ribbons do the vouching. A man who has been there tells the viewer that the war against Japan is not nearly won, and his medals are meant to settle the point. Whether the dark glasses and the words "I can't see it" are meant as a joke about blindness, the record does not say.

Two messages in one headline

The poster's argument is fair on its face. Warning people that a war is not won yet is a reasonable thing for an army to say, and a veteran is a fair witness. The trouble is the noun. The Army chose to name the enemy with a slur for a nationality, so the warning about a hard fight also taught that the people on the other side were a race to be sneered at. That was wrong, and it came from an official office, not a private printer.

Two other 1944 Army official posters on this site carry ISD numbers. I.S.D. No. 148 puts the same slur in a headline about wiping out the enemy, and ISD No. 165, Stay on the Job, carries none. The Navy's Your Enemy the Jap is from the same year. The anti-Japanese propaganda hub and its poster gallery gather more, and the Roosevelt administration essay sets the official sheets beside the private ones.