Tokio Kid poster no. 812, rivets on the floor

Tokio Kid says rivets on the floor are a gift

Douglas Aircraft poster no. 812 (1942) has Tokio Kid steal rivets. NARA 533957. Quoted speech is the sheet's; the slur is not paraphrased.

Techniques named on the archive record

Name-callingTransfer

Date

1942

Made by

Douglas Aircraft Company, Inc., Santa Monica ('Tokio Kid' plant-poster series)

Medium

Poster

Country

United States

Regime

Roosevelt Administration

NARA

NARA 533957

Source

Identified Openly sourced: the speaker is who they say they are

Source

U.S. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA 533957, local id 179-WP-99), via Wikimedia Commons , retrieved October 2, 2026

Source

Public domain in the US (published 1942 without a copyright notice); NARA: No Copyright - United States U.S. National Archives and Records Administration (NARA 533957, 179-WP-99)

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.

Tokio Kid Say: Rivets on Floor is a 1942 poster, number 812, published by Douglas Aircraft Company, Inc., Santa Monica. It says rivets left on the floor are "gone to scrap" and a victory "in bag for Jap" (NARA 533957).

What the sheet said

The archive describes a photographed tabletop of modelled figures: workers fit a wheel part, and the caricature comes around a wall with a knife and a sack of rivets. The words are short enough to memorize, which is the point of a shop wall.

TOKIO KID SAY-

RIVETS ON FLOOR GONE TO SCRAP MAKING VICTORY IN BAG FOR JAP

THANK YOU

DOUGLAS AIRCRAFT CO., INC., SANTA MONICA, CALIF., U.S.A.

POSTER NO. 812

Transcription in the FRAME record. Full record at propagandaarchive.org. NARA 533957, local id 179-WP-99.

Scrap is a real loss. The slur is extra.

Dropped fasteners cost money and time. That sentence can be posted in plain English. Poster 812 adds a character who thanks the crew for the loss, and it names him with a slur. The Imperial Japanese government's war production was a military fact. A sack of stolen rivets in a caricature's hand is a metaphor. The metaphor teaches the floor to see a race, not a supply problem.

Read it beside poster 714 and the mishap sheet. Same figure, three chores: the award, the accident, the scrap. The Tokio Kid page keeps the three together.

Sources

FRAME object record, Tokio Kid Say: Rivets on Floor (poster no. 812), 1942. Douglas Aircraft Company, Inc., Santa Monica. NARA 533957, local id 179-WP-99. Rights as recorded: public domain in the US (published 1942 without a copyright notice); NARA: No Copyright - United States.