# Thank You So Much, American Soldier, for Wasting Food (1943), a Camp Lee poster

Thank you so much, American soldier, for wasting food is a 1943 U.S. Army poster hand-lettered by Pvt. Norman Dankowitz of QMATC, Camp Lee, Virginia. A bowing, grinning caricature with a pistol, a rising-sun cap, a swastika armband and an Iron Cross thanks the soldier (NARA 515530).

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      Thank You So Much, American Soldier, for Wasting Food (Help Tojo Win War)

      Thank You So Much, American Soldier, for Wasting Food (1943), a Camp Lee poster
      A 1943 Camp Lee poster by Pvt. Norman Dankowitz has a bowing caricature with rising-sun cap and swastika armband thank soldiers for wasting food. NARA

## Techniques named on the archive record

Name-callingTransfer
      Date1943Made byU.S. Army, hand-lettered by Pvt. Norman Dankowitz, QMATC, Camp Lee, Virginia (as signed)MediumPosterCountryUnited StatesRegimeRoosevelt AdministrationNARANARA 515530; Record Group 44SourceIdentified Openly sourced: the speaker is who they say they areSourceU.S. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA 515530, local id 44-PA-1851), 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

  Thank you so much, American soldier, for wasting food is a 1943 U.S. Army poster hand-lettered by Pvt. Norman Dankowitz of QMATC, Camp Lee, Virginia. A bowing, grinning caricature with a pistol, a rising-sun cap, a swastika armband and an Iron Cross thanks the soldier (NARA 515530).

## What the sheet prints

Content note: the central figure is a racial caricature, which the archive identifies as Tojo. It is described here as the archive records it.

A grinning figure in a brown uniform and glasses bows toward the viewer. One hand is open; the other holds a pistol. His cap bears a rising-sun disc, and he also wears a swastika armband and an Iron Cross, so the insignia of two enemy states are pinned to one body. His thanks come in a speech bubble.

THANK YOU SO MUCH, AMERICAN SOLDIER

FOR WASTING FOOD

HELP TOJO WIN WAR

FCP-2

PVT. Norman Dankowitz

QMATC CAMP LEE, VA.

Transcription in the FRAME record. The archive notes that the signature block at lower right and "FCP-2" at lower left are hand-lettered in small type. Full record at propagandaarchive.org. NARA 515530, local id 44-PA-1851, Record Group 44.

## Who made it

The poster is addressed to soldiers, and a soldier signed it. The signature names Pvt. Norman Dankowitz of QMATC, Camp Lee, Virginia, and the archive lists the issuer as the U.S. Army, hand-lettered by Dankowitz as signed. The code FCP-2 sits at lower left; the record does not explain it. The National Archives holds the sheet in the World War II Posters series of Record Group 44, and the record gives no print run or posting places.

## What it gets wrong

The archive tags name-calling and transfer. The request is sound: do not waste food. The delivery is a racial caricature of Tojo, grinning and bowing with mock courtesy while he holds a gun. Then the German insignia are added, so the cartoon merges two governments into one face defined by race.

That figure did not need to be there. A poster about food waste could have asked men to finish their rations without teaching them that the enemy was a race. The sheet was made inside the Army by an enlisted man, and the record does not show who approved it or how widely it hung. What it does show is that in 1943 a private reached for this caricature to make a point about leftovers.

The same merger of German and Japanese symbols appears on the 1942 Seeburg sheet Save Your Scraps to Bomb the Japs. An official Army sheet from the same year, The Jap Way: Cold-Blooded Murder, uses a slur in its own title. The anti-Japanese propaganda hub sets these images in one place and says what was wrong with them.

## Sources

- FRAME object record, Thank You So Much, American Soldier, for Wasting Food (Help Tojo Win War), 1943. U.S. Army, hand-lettered by Pvt. Norman Dankowitz, QMATC, Camp Lee, Virginia (as signed).

- U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Records of the Office of Government Reports, Record Group 44, World War II Posters, NARA 515530, local id 44-PA-1851, 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/thank-you-for-wasting-food-help-tojo-1943/