El Enemigo de la Humanidad, a Spanish-language indictment of Japan from Washington

El Enemigo de la Humanidad ("The Enemy of Humanity") is a Spanish-language poster published by the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs in Washington and dated 1941. A snarling soldier with a bloodied bayonet stands beside four dated panels charging Japan with tyranny, aggression, terror and treachery (NAID 44268151).

Four dates, four charges

The archive describes a shirtless soldier, snarling, with blood on his bayonet, filling most of the sheet. Beside him are four small scenes, each with a place, a year and one word in capitals. The scenes include burning towns. The words are Spanish, and the catalog gives the audience as a foreign public.

EL ENEMIGO DE LA HUMANIDAD

FORMOSA—1895 TIRANÍA . . . [...]

COREA—1910 AGRESIÓN . . . Aquí, los caciques militares japoneses emplearon nuevamente la fuerza bruta como instrumento de política nacional para anexarse territorio.

CHINA—1937 TERROR . . . La soldadesca japonesa desbordó su crueldad en la violación y ultraje de Nanking, el incidente más oprobioso de la guerra contra China.

ESTADOS UNIDOS—1941 TRAICIÓN . . . El Japón se lanza nuevamente a la guerra, pero no con lealtad, sino con alevosía, atacando a la flota de los Estados Unidos en Pearl Harbor.

Publicada por el Coordinador de Asuntos Interamericanos, Washington, E. U. A.

The archive's English version is labelled a machine translation by Claude, not verified by a fluent reader. In it, the Korea panel says Japanese military chiefs "again used brute force as an instrument of national policy to annex territory," and the last panel calls the Pearl Harbor attack treachery.

How it argues

The archive tags three techniques. The headline makes a whole country "the enemy of humanity," which is name-calling. The burning towns and the bloodied blade aim at fear. And four chosen episodes stand in for a national record, which is card stacking.

The text is more careful than the picture. Each panel names an actor: the Japanese government, the military chiefs, the soldiery, Japan as a state. The charges are about conquest and atrocity, not ancestry, and the sheet uses no slur. The drawing is less careful: it gives the viewer one savage face for a whole people.

The sender

The issuer line is plain: published by the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs, Washington. A government told its Spanish-language readers abroad exactly who was speaking. The last panel refers to Pearl Harbor, which the Roosevelt administration essay dates to 7 December 1941. Other Coordinator sheets are in the archive; for the domestic side of the same war, see the anti-Japanese propaganda hub and its poster gallery.