# This Isn't War... It's Murder (1943), the Army poster built on a news clipping

This isn't war... it's murder is a 1943 U.S. Army official poster, I.S.D. No. 100. Helmeted soldiers with skull-like faces bayonet toward a figure under a red cross, above a pasted Associated Press clipping headed "Japs Bayonet U. S. Wounded" and the order "Make 'em pay... Keep producing" (NARA 513570).

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      This Isn't War... It's Murder (U.S. Army Official Poster)

      This Isn't War... It's Murder (1943), the Army poster built on a news clipping
      U.S. Army poster I.S.D. No. 100 (1943) pastes an AP clipping, "Japs Bayonet U. S. Wounded," under "This isn't war... it's murder." NARA 513570.

## Techniques named on the archive record

Outrage baitName-calling
      Date1943Made byU.S. Army, Information Service Division (ISD No. 100)MediumPosterCountryUnited StatesRegimeRoosevelt AdministrationNARANARA 513570; Record Group 44SourceIdentified Openly sourced: the speaker is who they say they areSourceU.S. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA 513570, local id 44-PA-122), 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

  This isn't war... it's murder is a 1943 U.S. Army official poster, I.S.D. No. 100. Helmeted soldiers with skull-like faces bayonet toward a figure under a red cross, above a pasted Associated Press clipping headed "Japs Bayonet U. S. Wounded" and the order "Make 'em pay... Keep producing" (NARA 513570).

## Drawing and clipping

Content note: the reproduced newspaper headline uses an ethnic slur for Japanese people, and the soldiers are drawn as distorted, near-skeletal figures. Both are quoted and described as printed.

Soldiers in dark helmets, their faces drawn as distorted and almost skull-like, thrust bayonets toward a figure under a red-cross marker. Below the drawing is a pasted newspaper clipping, torn at one edge. The poster's words and the legible part of the clipping read:

THIS

ISN'T WAR

...IT'S

MURDER

Japs Bayonet U. S. Wounded

Ambushed on Pacific Island

By J. Norman Lodge

Associated Press Staff Writer

With United States Troops on New Georgia Island, July 27 (Delayed).—A Japanese ambush attack on wounded American soldiers was [illegible]

[...]

Make 'em pay...

KEEP PRODUCING

U.S. ARMY OFFICIAL POSTER

I.S.D. No. 100

Transcription in the FRAME record. The archive notes that the clipping is torn at the edge and its lower lines are cropped by the layout and not transcribed. Full record at propagandaarchive.org. NARA 513570, local id 44-PA-122, Record Group 44.

## The Army's numbering

The sheet calls itself a "U.S. Army Official Poster," numbered I.S.D. No. 100, and the archive gives the issuer as the Army's Information Service Division. The clipping credits J. Norman Lodge of the Associated Press, datelined New Georgia Island, July 27. The National Archives holds the poster in Record Group 44. The record gives no artist and no print run.

## A headline as evidence

The archive tags outrage bait and name-calling. The design borrows a newspaper's authority: the drawing illustrates a wire report, and the report is presented as proof. Much of the report is cropped, so the reader sees a headline, a byline and a first line, and the drawing fills in the rest. Then the anger is given a single outlet, the production line.

An attack on wounded men is a grave charge, and the clipping carries a byline and a dateline. The poster still takes liberties with it. It turns a report about one ambush into a picture of an enemy whose soldiers are hardly human, and it reprints a headline that names them with a slur. The poster's own line is the reasonable part: keep producing. The record does not show where it was posted or what effect it had.

The next number in the same Army series, The Jap Way: Cold-Blooded Murder (I.S.D. No. 101), uses the same pattern of headline and demand. The anti-Japanese propaganda hub and its poster gallery gather related sheets, and the hub says plainly where they went wrong.

## Sources

- FRAME object record, This Isn't War... It's Murder (U.S. Army Official Poster), 1943. U.S. Army, Information Service Division (I.S.D. No. 100).

- U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Records of the Office of Government Reports, Record Group 44, World War II Posters, NARA 513570, local id 44-PA-122, catalog record, 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/this-isnt-war-its-murder-army-1943/