# The Little Jap Is a Big Job! (1945), U.S. Army Official Poster I.S.D. No. 241

"The little Jap is a BIG JOB!" is a 1945 U.S. Army Official Poster, I.S.D. No. 241. One Japanese infantryman with a bayonet runs forward in front of a large red sun-ray disc, and the slur sits in the headline (NARA 515622).

- Home
- Archive
- The Little Jap Is a Big Job! (1945), U.S. Army Official Poster I.S.D. No. 241

      The Little Jap Is a Big Job! (U.S. Army Official Poster)

      The Little Jap Is a Big Job! (1945), U.S. Army Official Poster I.S.D. No. 241
      "The little Jap is a BIG JOB!": a 1945 U.S. Army Official Poster, I.S.D. No. 241, puts a slur over a charging Japanese soldier and a rising-sun disc.

## Techniques named on the archive record

Name-callingTransfer
      Date1945Made byU.S. Army, Information Service Division (ISD No. 241)MediumPosterCountryUnited StatesRegimeTruman AdministrationNARANARA 515622; Record Group 44SourceIdentified Openly sourced: the speaker is who they say they areSourceU.S. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA 515622, local id 44-PA-1940), Records of the Office of Government Reports, Record Group 44, series 'World War II Posters' , retrieved October 2, 2026SourcePublic domain (U.S. Government work; NARA use restriction '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

  "The little Jap is a BIG JOB!" is a 1945 U.S. Army Official Poster, I.S.D. No. 241. One Japanese infantryman with a bayonet runs forward in front of a large red sun-ray disc, and the slur sits in the headline (NARA 515622).

## The sheet

Content note: the headline uses an ethnic slur for Japanese people, and this page reproduces the slur because the Army printed it.

The archive describes a single Japanese infantryman with a bayonet, his helmet marked with a rising-sun flag, running forward. Behind him is a large red sun-ray disc on a white triangle, set against a yellow field. The words are few.

U. S. ARMY OFFICIAL POSTER

The little Jap

is a BIG JOB!

I. S. D. No. 241

U. S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE : 1945-O-651829

Transcription in the FRAME record; the archive notes that the last digits of the printing-office number are small. Full record at propagandaarchive.org. NARA 515622, local id 44-PA-1940, Record Group 44.

## The issuer is the Army

The record credits the U.S. Army, Information Service Division, and the sheet calls itself an official Army poster. It was printed by the Government Printing Office. The audience is the domestic public and the purpose "Mobilize or secure compliance." The themes are war and the military, the home front, and race and ethnicity. The National Archives holds it in Record Group 44, the Office of Government Reports' World War II Posters series.

That matters. Some slur posters on this site came from private firms, such as the J. P. Seeburg salvage sheet Save Your Scraps to Bomb the Japs. This one carries the Army's name and a federal printing number.

## What it says, and what it gets wrong

The archive tags name-calling and transfer. The headline's literal claim, that defeating Japan is a large task, is a fair thing for an army to say. The sheet says it by shrinking the enemy to a slur and a diminutive, then inflating him with his own national emblem. The label and the flag stand in for any fact about Japan's strength.

The slur names an ancestry, not an army. A government that asks its citizens to finish a war can do so without teaching them a racial insult. The War Manpower Commission's Get the Jap and Get It Over! used the same word in a 1945 headline, and the Urgent Notice security poster of the same year used it once in its text. The anti-Japanese propaganda hub and its poster gallery gather the rest.

## Sources

- FRAME object record, The Little Jap Is a Big Job! (U.S. Army Official Poster), 1945. U.S. Army, Information Service Division (I.S.D. No. 241). Source classed as openly identified.

- U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Records of the Office of Government Reports, Record Group 44, World War II Posters, 44-PA-1940, NARA 515622, retrieved by the archive 2 October 2026. Rights as recorded: public domain (U.S. Government work; NARA use restriction "Unrestricted").

Canonical: https://americanpropaganda.org/collection/the-little-jap-is-a-big-job-army-1945/