# This Man May Die if You Talk Too Much (1943), the sailor in the porthole

This Man May Die if You Talk Too Much is OWI Poster No. 6, signed Sarra, in a 1943 printing. A color photograph shows a young sailor framed in a riveted porthole between the two halves of the warning (NAID 513607).

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      This Man May Die if You Talk Too Much

      This Man May Die if You Talk Too Much (1943), the sailor in the porthole
      OWI Poster No. 6, signed Sarra, 1943 printing: a young sailor in a porthole and the warning "This man may die if you talk too much." NAID 513607.

## Techniques named on the archive record

Fear appeal
      Date1943Made byOffice of War Information (art: Sarra)MediumPosterCountryUnited StatesRegimeRoosevelt AdministrationNARANAID 513607; Record Group 44SourceIdentified Openly sourced: the speaker is who they say they areSourceU.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Record Group 44, World War II Posters , retrieved October 4, 2026SourcePublic domain (U.S. government work) Office of War Information. National Archives and Records Administration, RG 44, 44-PA-160 (NAID 513607).
      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 Man May Die if You Talk Too Much is OWI Poster No. 6, signed Sarra, in a 1943 printing. A color photograph shows a young sailor framed in a riveted porthole between the two halves of the warning (NAID 513607).

## What the poster prints

A photograph, not a painting, carries this sheet. The archive describes a young sailor in color, seen through a riveted ship's porthole. The warning is split around him: a heavy headline above, a lower-case clause below.

THIS MAN MAY DIE

if you talk too much

[signature:] SARRA

OWI Poster No. 6. Additional copies may be obtained upon request from the Division of Public Inquiries, Office of War Information, Washington, D.C.

[imprint:] U.S. GOVERNMENT PRINTING OFFICE : 1943-O-584861

Transcription in the FRAME record. Full record at propagandaarchive.org. NAID 513607, local id 44-PA-160, Record Group 44.

## Who issued it

The Office of War Information gave it the number 6, an early place in its numbered series. The art is credited to Sarra, the name signed on the sheet; the record gives no fuller name, and this page adds none. The GPO job number on this copy reads 1943, so the archive dates the object to that year.

## How to read it

The archive tags it as a fear appeal. The method is personal. Instead of a convoy or a map, the viewer gets one face, close, looking out. "This man" is a pointing phrase: he is right here, and you could be the one who kills him. The porthole frames him as if he were already at sea and already exposed.

The weak point is "too much." The sheet does not say how much is too much, or about what. That vagueness is useful to a security campaign, because it covers every case, and it is also its cost: a citizen told that ordinary talk may kill a sailor has been given no rule to follow, only a worry. Shipping and troop details were genuine secrets. Most conversation was not. Nothing here is compulsory, and the poster stays a request for discretion, which a free people can grant without giving up speech in general.

Companion sheets: A Careless Word... Another Cross (OWI Poster No. 23), He's Watching You, and All the Ear-Marks of a Sneaky Jap!, a plant-security poster that prints a slur. The OWI poster index lists the numbered run. The rumor clinics case study treats the newspaper columns that answered rumors as a separate campaign from security posters like this one, which warned against talk of any kind.

## Sources

- FRAME object record, This Man May Die if You Talk Too Much, 1943. Office of War Information (OWI Poster No. 6), art signed Sarra.

- U.S. National Archives and Records Administration, Record Group 44, World War II Posters, NAID 513607, local id 44-PA-160, catalog record, retrieved by the archive 4 October 2026. Rights as recorded: public domain (U.S. government work).

Canonical: https://americanpropaganda.org/collection/this-man-may-die-if-you-talk-too-much-owi-poster-6-1943/