Urgent Notice (1945), the security poster signed by Army G-2, Naval Intelligence and the FBI

Urgent Notice is a 1945 all-text red poster signed by the Army's Assistant Chief of Staff G-2, the Director of Naval Intelligence and J. Edgar Hoover of the FBI. Four numbered points warn that information "is reaching Japan" and list what not to discuss. UNT Digital Library copy.

Four numbered points

Content note: point 3 of the notice uses an ethnic slur for the Japanese enemy, which stays in the transcription below.

The poster has no picture. It is red, with four numbered paragraphs and three signature blocks, each under an agency seal and a handwritten signature.

URGENT

NOTICE

1. Fighting men and materials are being shifted for final phases of the war with Japan.

2. The enemy is using desperate measures to obtain all information which will help him delay his complete defeat.

Such information is reaching Japan.

3. The small bit of information you discuss may help the Jap determine where, when, and with how much we strike.

4. Don't discuss:

(a) Location or movements of men, ships and materials within, to or from Asiatic-Pacific areas.

(b) New weapons.

(c) Military information gained in confidence.

Clayton Bissell, Major General, GSC

Assistant Chief of Staff, G-2

Hewlett Thebaud, Rear Admiral, U.S. Navy

Director of Naval Intelligence

J. Edgar Hoover, Director

Federal Bureau of Investigation

Three signatures

The record credits the War Department's Military Intelligence G-2, the Office of Naval Intelligence and the FBI, jointly signed, with printing by the Government Printing Office. The issuer type is military, the audience the domestic public, the purpose "Warn or inform." The themes are war and the military, and security and surveillance. The archive tags testimonial, for the three officials' names, and name-calling, for the one use of "the Jap."

Reading it

Next to the other security posters on this site, this one is specific. Point 4 names three kinds of information, and an ordinary reader could tell whether a conversation crossed the line. That is a fair way for a government to ask for discretion in wartime. The poster cites no statute and threatens no penalty.

Two things weaken it. Point 2 asserts that information "is reaching Japan" and offers nothing to show it. And the head of a domestic law-enforcement bureau signs a notice to civilians beside two military intelligence officers, which puts the FBI's authority behind a request about military secrets. The record does not say why the Bureau joined. The slur in point 3 adds nothing the word "enemy" had not already said.

Compare A Careless Word... Another Cross, which links any loose word to a grave without naming what to avoid, and the War Department's 1942 Silence Means Security. The same year's Army poster The Little Jap Is a Big Job! put the slur in its headline. The anti-Japanese propaganda hub gathers the period's sheets.